NextLogic's story

Does my SME business need off-the-shelf software or customized software solution?

2010-09-23T13:47:00.000+08:00

It’s a question that maybe some SME business owners ask themselves when thinking of automating their business but from my experience they don’t really care. SME business owner does not really care what is the official label “we” IT vendors put on our products or solutions, what matters is if it can do what it’s supposed to do, what they are paying for. And as SME business owner myself I totally understand that.
At the same time because we are IT vendor and compete on very rough market where anything and everything can be called anything and everything, its our responsibility to help SME business owners understand the difference so they won’t get lost when searching for solution to their day to day business challenges. Hopefully it will help them to prevent many costly mistakes and decisions when selecting their IT vendor and mainly frustration that often comes in the package too.

To start off, to me there is no direct competition between off-the-shelf software application or software as such and customized software solution if taken literally as one is ready made product that you take and use (even if IT vendor claims it can be customized to client’s requirements, many of them just say it but at the end are unwilling to do so) and second as name suggests is a solution (something crafted especially for you). Simple parallel would be buying clothes – sometimes you just need to walk into the shop and buy off the rack and sometimes you decide to go to tailor and have the suit or dress tailor made for you. When you analyze why you do that and what motivates you, you will be easily able to come up with the answer to the question of this blog yourself even in relation to software solution that your company needs.
Yes, you can always buy clothes off the rack and then customize them a bit here and there to suit you better, that’s also option when it comes to software solutions, but I am sure you would agree that tailors do not compete directly with clothes retail stores and that they are targeting different audience. Not necessarily different people as such, just people in different states of mind, with different motivation and different needs.

What are then factors or motivators for choosing one or the other when shopping for clothes? My husband went to tailor first time before our wedding and when he felt the difference between pants off the rack and the ones he got from tailor, he never went back to buy his office pants to the retail store. Yes, tailored made ones were a bit more costly and it took a little more effort to come up with final solution but the process was worth it as the pants can last longer, he doesn’t have to shop for them as often, they are of much higher quality, they are more comfortable and the moment he liked the tailor he goes back to him for his office shirts and suits also as now the tailor knows what my husband likes and how he likes it and its much easier to deliver to him faster and satisfactorily. Btw, I go to the same tailor for my pants too (basically everything that is supposed to look good on us and at the same time last for longer time as we use it quite often and it must be extremely comfortable too).
Here I need to stress one important thing. We got to know about this tailor through our friend who recommended him as she had very good experience with him. Believe me, even when selecting IT vendor or especially when selecting IT vendor – word of mouth or personal reference goes a long way, the chances of selecting rightly are much better. If that’s not possible, make sure you not just read testimonials of website but actually call people in those companies and ask about IT vendor personally.

To sum up, its actually very simple to know whether you need off-the-shelf software or customized software solution, isn’t it? Are you looking for something that can be re-purchased and changed often because its cheap or should it last as long as possible once everybody becomes familiar and used to it? Are you looking at automating some part of your business that is mostly standard (almost 98% same as in other companies) or something that is unique to your business and your company? Do you want to gain competitive advantage or you do not mind having what all your competitors have? Are you looking at short-term solution or long-term solution that would bring a major business improvement and business growth? Do you have time just enough to go to the “retail store” or do you have enough time to go to “tailor”? Are you willing to invest your time to establish relationship with “tailor” to make sure you get what you want the way you want it?

Don’t take me wrong, I don’t want to brag about customized software solutions. I strongly believe that some companies at certain point at their business lifetime are really better off with off-the-shelf software and should not go into customization until they feel real need for it or until they feel ready for it. It’s not advisable and that is why SMEs should really carefully consider what is the best solution for their company from current perspective and only then look for suitable IT vendor. It’s as simple as that.

Advantages of Automating your Busines

2010-08-31T15:26:00.001+08:00

Advantages of Automating your Business

In today’s marketplace one of the keys is to be able to produce more and do it better, faster and still being able to maintain a high quality standard. This will help to ensure continued business growth. Often SME’s (small and medium sized enterprises) have a challenge with this due to many upgrades or changes they would need to do for business automation are cost prohibitive.

Most SME’s will agree, however, that business automation is required for their companies to stay competitive and to continue to experience positive business growth.

Putting money aside for the moment, what are the advantages of an SME if they increase their business automation through implementation of customized web based business software applications.

1. Great reduction or elimination of time spent moving paperwork around an office or company. By automating faxing, filing, distributing and other functions, a company can save thousands of hours each year. And thereby increase productivity.

2. Automate all route tasks to eliminate wasted time of key personnel and others. This will also assist in business growth as it gives your employees more time to do the things that increase your bottom line.

3. Business automation of work flow and project status ensure that you have accurate and up to the minute reporting of where these projects are in relation to the customers deadlines.

4. Using business automation customize software to create a central location for all documentation will increase productivity as this allows everyone to find what they need immediately without having to dig through unorganized filing cabinets. This will also increase your business growth because less down time means more production time and more product.

5. SME’s often have several individuals who are responsible for maintain their customers’ information and staying in contact with them. Through the use of a central database, the SME can insure that whenever the customer information changes, order status and contact notes are available for everyone to see.

6. Last, but not least, through automation of as many systems and procedures as possible your customers are ensure a higher level of consistency when it comes to order larger quantities of product.

When it comes to an SME thinking about doing more business automation, the questions they need to be asking themselves are:

1. How long can afford to do business without automating most of our business?

2. How long will our customers put up with 10%, 20%, 30% product failure rate due to the need to automate our basic routines and repetitive tasks to ensure consistency.

3. How long can we stay in business with a flat or negative business growth if our customers find another SME who can provide them the same product and service, albeit faster and cheaper.

4. What is better, automating our company to increase our profit so we don’t have to reduce staff or reducing staff to increase our profit?

In today’s market place, the only way for an SME to stay competitive is to utilize customized web based business software applications to automate their business. Thereby allowing them to be better, fast but maintaining a higher quality stand. Keeping their current customers and helping them to secure new ones to increase their business growth.

Web based ERP solution for SMEs in Singapore - the best time to look into cost efficient business automation

2009-09-18T10:47:00.004+08:00

After years of hard work developing customized business software solutions for our clients from scratch we are happy to finally offer SME market in Singapore web based ERP solution that automates most important business processes as CRM, sales management, stock management, purchase management, basic human resource management and accounting with important analytical and reporting tools and dashboards. The beauty of course still is a possibility of any level of customization provided by our development team.

Based on our experience we learned that dealing with SMEs requires about 80% of standard ERP features and 20% is a space needed for customization to enable business to create and achieve business miracles. Too much space for customization is sometimes counterproductive for SMEs as we learned so moving forward in our business we are enhancing the offer with what SMEs really need.

And why now and not later ? Cause Singapore government is very supportive of Singapore SMEs and due to economic crisis is now until January 2010 or mid of 2010 providing up to 70% of subsidy for IT projects instead of standard 50%. So while waiting for economy to boost and be ready to kick off immediately after it improves, SMEs should now take their time, automate their businesses and get ready.

The idea of business automation is still very unknown to many business owners but our experience is once they get a taste of it, they will get addicted and won't stop until fully satisfied with the level of the automation of their business. That, however requires a positive experience with IT vendor and successful implementation of the project first. And then at least one year of a little bit of frustration here and there as automating business can sometimes be a frustrating experience. However, if business owners manage, with the tender care of their IT vendor, to go through this painful stage, they will eventually achieve business automation fulfillment manifested in growing sales numbers, better managerial decisions, increased cost savings, in the feeling of being more powerful by knowing so much more about your own business.

Business automation has its range of "standard" benefits like increased productivity and operational efficiency and effectiveness.....but there is so much more that you can learn about your business by simple investing into automating it bit by bit in stages.
The most surprising and sometimes entertaining ones from Nextlogic's experience for example would be:
1. Implementing business software solution many times exposes work of many employees in the company and some of our clients realized that while they quite happily relied on some facts & figures that were provided to them by their employees, they might not necessarily depend on correct numbers & facts (we are all unique and some people have a very unique way of preparing reports manually for example, its not about conscious cheating, it's more innocent belief they are doing a good job not realizing how many problems they might be actually creating for business).

Learning point for business owners: no matter how great is your accountant for example, make sure you learn your part to be able to verify what they feed you with (or eliminate these kind of problems with more transparent ERP software system from Nextlogic :o))

2. Painful experience of "getting to know" your own business - sometimes we can't stop wondering how surprising certain things about business operations are to business owners no matter how many years they have been running the business. Our experience is that often we have to create the state of a real "mess" in the company where many things need to be re-looked, re-thinked & re-evaluated as the whole process of automation requires business owners to define clearly what they want and how they want it. So, while it might look like an easy thing to do, the reality we are faced with every day when we develop & implement customized applications is that it's one of the most difficult thing for businesses and business owners to do.

Learning point for business owners - If you prefer less painful experience, go for more standard or off the shelf application where everything is pre-fixed and you just need to somehow fit your business processes into what these solutions offer. If however, you want to once and for all "clean up" what's not working in your business and replace it with better approaches and you are confident about what you want and how you want it, the freedom of customization is required.

Even if 80% is standard and only 20% needs to be adjusted to your unique business processes, be prepared that those 20% will be most painful one, will require your attention in terms of time, decisions about your business and so on. However, it is a business investment, its worth to go through it if you are serious about your business long term.
BUT....
We recommend NOT TO go into customization earlier than maybe after 2-3 years into business experience, because to be able to customize efficiently you need to have some experience to work with to be able to do it right.

So to sum up, there are few conditions to be met when you want to efficiently go through business automation with some level of customization (20-100%):

1. SME pre-requisites: at least 2-3 years of business experience, business owner serious about the business long term and willing to invest time during development & implementation, time commitment of project manager for at least few hours a week (for testing and providing feedback), budget of at least 2ok (for projects of about 3-4 months)

2. right decision when selecting your IT vendor - this is a very sensitive topic and I am not going to say it must be our company :), actually every IT provider is great for something else so really depends on what you need and what IT vendor can provide, just make sure you check minimum: experience of IT vendor (call their clients and see what is their experience, nothing better than this), check on all and hidden costs involved (development cost, licenses cost, application maintenance cost, server & hosting and server maintenance & user support cost, customization cost, consulting cost, training cost, etc.), ability to deliver what's promised, flexibility (this is very crucial, be careful cause many times if you define your system and sign the requirements document, you will be charged extra for every single change and our experience is that 90% whatever our clients define at the beginning is usually not what they really want but they only realize it much later when they start using the system in real day to day operations - so try to bargain for as much flexibility as possible), ability to help you apply for grant or advise you the best solution for your situation & budget available
(!!! Do not be afraid to share your idea about the budget with your IT vendor, they can advice you better when they know what they can work with - also do not expect to get a "Porsche" software solution at the cost of "Toyota", BE FAIR or you might be disappointed by no fault of IT vendor !!!)

3. right time - when you can allocate your time and time of your key employees to focus on business automation project and when you can get a government subsidy (usually economic downturn is the best time to look at your operations and making sure you smoothen it up so once market is up you can just "run" with full power & back end support).

Hope, it's been helpful,
Thank you

Dasha (blond business automation advisor :o))

Business - an exciting roller coaster

2009-07-29T09:41:00.007+08:00

I can't believe it's been 2 years since I updated this blog last time. Well, it's been 2 years of amazing lessons in business as well as in private life. Though it seems like we (Peter and me) did all the wrong decisions we could and now we have to iron it out, it did not look that way during those 2 years while it was happening. Actually, in terms of projects and profitability it seemed to be the best years in NextLogic history, however only now we know what the reality is.

One way or another, it's been great, we learned a lot, we had a chance to go from 2 man show company to fully operated 10 men company and drop back down to 4 people who can do much more than 10 ever could. Yeah, it's been years to learn that to manage human resources is really damn difficult and whatever could go wrong, went wrong, but hey, that's the beauty of having your own business. You try, you fail, you loose lots of time and money, but you end up being much bigger, evolved human being and entrepreneur with so much of experience that nobody can ever take away from you anymore.

It is so hard to explain and describe it, but once you make a peace with everything that has happened, it all looks positive and so self enhancing and that's the whole purpose. The important thing is that though we might have suffered a lot, our customers still got what we promised them and we fulfilled our promises and that what counts.

Thus I would like to express great thank you to everything that happened in past two years and to all that contributed to it to happen. It has grown us so much and though we still sometimes struggle to let it go and move on, we are trying every day our best.

NextLogic is still around, more mature, more grown, more established, ready for more, ready for bigger projects, ready for more quality people, ready to rock n roll.

The magic of dreaming and planning

2007-09-18T19:04:00.000+08:00

Every year during Christmas break we sit down, relax and plan, usually first only with Peter on more strategic level and later with our staff. As said in many books, we do not find the final output important, but the process really is inevitable for certain things to happen. So, this year in January we were discussing how by Juny/July '07 we will grow our company and bring NextLogic to the new level - move to real office, hire more programmers and designer, start working on developing e-learning platform for our staff and how we might move into Ruby training in Singapore as no one else is really doing it here yet.
There you go, not even knowing how, its September and our business is exactly there. We have our great real office in Singapore, we are expecting our team to grow with 2-3 new members at the beginning of October (we will be hiring ex-offenders as we planned it, finally after one year of training in prison they are ready and able to join our team and we cannot be more happy about it). We just ran our first commercial Ruby on Rails training this weekend and Peter has been training SMU and NUS students since ITCS approached him last month and he will also be sitting in as a judge in ExtremeApps 24hours programming competition sponsored by Google coming weekend.
It really looked nothing like that maybe even a month ago. Its unbelievable how things sometimes out of nowhere start falling into place maybe because we planned them many months ago. I guess it applies in life and in business. We are very happy that our baby NextLogic has survived officially its first 2 years, that its growing and we are looking forward to the experience ahead.
Here are some photos from this week training that, by the way, was very successful and we are planning for more in the coming months.
We aim to be pioneers for Ruby on Rails in Singapore and its really happening.
So, dream and plan, as those dreams and plans might come true if the motivation behind them is strong enough.

NextLogic's trade secret

2007-09-16T17:01:00.000+08:00

I am not a programmer. I am "just" in charge of sales and marketing in NextLogic but I know what I must know about our trade and I am more than happy to share it. If only somebody would listen.
We have been around at the market for about 3 years now and we keep repeating small simple tricks that we use in our business to all IT companies, especially software development companies. It is not because we are so damn proud believing that nobody can copy us anyway but because we hope they will improve their service, prices, etc. and thus the whole image of software development industry would improve too. But its not happening. Maybe they think we are lying to them to confuse them :o).
What are the simple tricks or magic tricks that we use that not many software developers yet want to implement:

give away your source code (at least if you develop customized software applications) - do not lock your customer to you just by holding back the heart of the application, give it away, its a great motivation to provide an outstanding service so your clients will be motivated to continue working with you and they will trust you more
use Ruby on Rails - move on from old outdated programming languages like Foxpro, C sharp, PHP or even from Java - use the best that you can at the time, upgrade your skills set regurarly, do not sell solutions developed in languages that are already outdated, its like selling food after its expiry period. Do not think that because something is simple, it can't be powerful (Ruby). We have built over 40 customized applications in 21 different industries in past 3 years in Ruby and Ruby on Rails and they all work well and saved us lots of time and money and thus we could provide much more affordable solutions to our SME clients. Btw. if by now you do not know what Ruby on Rails is, better go and study fast or join our trainings :o) www.nextlogic.biz/ruby_training, www.rubyonrails.org
utilize Open Source & contribute to Open Source - save time and cost to your clients by utiling tools/libraries, etc. that Open Source offers, there is no need anymore to reinvent the wheel BUT there is a need to contribute back so we all can learn and get better (by all I mean Geeks called IT people including anybody who provides software development services, hosting services, web design, etc.)
use agile development practices - the waterfall approach it outdated and not suitable anymore, upgrade the way you approach development and deployment of your applications and the way how you deal and interact with your customers, use test driven development, object oriented programming , etc.
do not sell BMW if the client is looking for Toyota - meaning its our responsibility as IT experts to provide to our clients or prospective clients solutions that match what their needs are (as in any other industry). Do not think that because people are not IT savvy you can sell them anything, do not assume they are stupid. I have seen many cases in which my clients paid lots of money for something they didnt need at the first place. Unfortunately, its still a very common feature of IT vendors to recommend inappropriate solutions just to increase sales. I am not sure why they do it but I would love to encourage all to stop doing that. Its proven (from our experience too) that if you start with small simple application that your client actually needs and will see the benefits faster, he would definitely ask for more evantually, just be patient and do an outstanding job.
take responsibility - we are all human and we make mistakes, that's OK and our clients understand that. So, lets try not to bulshit them, if we make a mistake, we should admit it, apologize and fix it, not start fingerpointing game with fighting over contract whose fault is what, it makes no sense. Customer IS always right. If you make a mistake and customer wants his money back, give him money back with the smile and apologize, do not charge for something you had not delivered, no matter how much time you spent on it already.
use SDM (www.scoredigitalmedia.com) to save cost for your clients and to be socially responsible company - SDM is something like a small IT company within Singapore Changi prison. It consist of very talented people (inmates) who could develop simple designs, videos, CMS websites for very little money and in much better quality than many IT vendors or freelancers at the market. How do I know it ? Because we trained some of them for the past one year :o) and we work very closely with SDM and support Yellow Ribbon Project. Many times I am suprised how little Singaporeans know about some of the government initiatives that are very powerful and mainly related to their business. Put SDM on your list of partners or competitors as its for sure one of those depending on how you see them. We proudly outsource lots of design jobs to them and we are happy about it.

There are many more things you could do to make life of your clients easier, lets share, explore and get better so we all can be proud of what our industry is like.

How not to waste money on your CRM

2007-09-10T18:00:00.000+08:00

Today, I would like to touch on the issue of utilizing CRM so it actually makes sense to use it and pay for it. Our SBS CRM is very simple and basic and it mainly caters to very small business owners, sole proprietors or even agents. Its is also very cheap yet those money might not be worth to spend if its not used properly. The more clients use our system the more I can see what kind of problems they are facing and it all comes down to the same thing - it doesn't produce what is expected because its not fully and properly used (unless technology fails of course).
I just would like to share how I am using the very same CRM for my own business as we are also SME and we do use it on a daily basis.
All it requires to make you money and save you stress and energy is DISCIPLINE, CONSISTENCY & PERSISTANCE.
Well, it might sound simple but its not as its directly linked to the traits of the human beings who are using the system. So the system is just as good as the person who is operating it.

How I do it and how it works for me ?
Being an addicted networker I go for many networking events where I collect many business cards and as soon as I come back or latest within a week (during weekend) I make sure I key in into the CRM details of all people I met or talked to with comments that I remember about them.

The second step is to follow up and here is how my simple follow up looks like:
1. I send thank you and "happy to meet you email" to all people I met, I do not wait for them to make a first step cause surprisingly, when I tested that approach, I didn't experience much initiative from their side..so I don't wait, I email them stating also that I will have a look at their web to learn more about their products and services so I can refer them correct people if I get a chance. This initiates two basic responses - none or email back :o). The ones that email back are worth to follow up on and I make a remark into CRM about all that happened - who answered, what I learned at the websites about companies, who might be potential good people to introduce to them, etc. Btw. after email I also sms to ask people to check their email and reply as in this age of spam you never know if they will receive your email or not.
2. I send 2nd email to the ones that responded and some others that I called or smsed stating that I would like to meet up in person and learn more about them and their services. Its so called "get to know each other" meeting. Most of them agree and here I mark down into CRM when is the meeting so I do not forget and make sure I will not schedule anything else there.
3. Meeting - I go for the meeting and learn more about the person and tell them about my business and myself. Most of the time is to see if we like each other and if there is any avenue for cooperation at all. Most of the time there is no potential at the first meeting, it usually takes me 3-6 months of permanent follow up till some real action takes place (meaning they refer me or I refer them or we become partners, etc.) I do not rush it, just use my CRM as my diary to keep note of everything that is happening and my comments. After the meeting, I key in what we discussed and what should be follow up and set up follow up date (being a follow up call, proposal, next meeting or just "no reason KIV")
4. Regular follow up - if there is nothing specific to work on I put follow up date as one month from the date that we met. I will make sure I will email the person at least once a month or call them to say hi and of course track it in the CRM. I also write down in case I meet them again at another networking event. With every event we usually know each other better and better so meeting same people at different networking events all over again and again might not necessarily be a bad thing. You can enhance relationship, just make sure you remember them (which for me is a challenge as many Asians look alike to me :o))
5. Sooner or later I definitely utilize the contact for something meaningful for the business and if not after 6 months I categorize them as "trash" in my CRM but I never delete their record. In case I get in touch with them again I must know what has happened before. And as my company grows and I will pass some of my contacts to my staff to follow up with the whole story linked to those accounts. It will be much easier to take care of them and much more professional. Having a proper info about all your contacts pays off, sometimes you do not even imagine how and when:
a) you decide to venture into another business and suddenly all contacts you found useless for your current business become very important
b) by writing it down you remember better whom you met and what happened and will avoid many unnecessary embarrassing situations when you proposing something to someone for the second time (or more times) not even realizing it
c) the history of your dealings with your accounts can serve as role model process of dealing with contacts and serve as a training to your new staff (saves you lots of time)
d) helps to avoid lots of finger pointing and blaming who is right and who is wrong - if you take your little time to write down everything down when it happens, you can always refer back to it as a proof

There are many benefits and they will be different for different people, but you will never experience them until you start to practice something along the line of what I just described. It doesn't have to be exactly the same, as long as it makes sense and brings results to you.
In this century, if somebody tries to outsmart me by saying that they remember it all by heart and do not need any system, I just laugh. Its possible with 10 customers but not with 100 customers, thats a fact. Information about your contacts is your future gold, do not throw it away, keep it, update it, use it for everybody's benefit.
At the end of the day, it does not matter which CRM you use as long as you use it properly and of course as long as it saves your time and makes your life easier and not more complicated. More complicated only means how data and data entry is structured in CRM, not that you can be flaky about using CRM.

Law of attraction in business

2007-05-24T23:33:00.000+08:00

Today I got into a discussion with my biz friend about the law of attraction in life and in business. It seems to be a very big topic these days and months and as I started to think more about it, it makes sense actually. What I see now is that we really attract such a people, things or events into our life as we are. We ourselves need to be great in order to attract great people & things into our lives. We cannot blame anyone but ourselves if we are attracting wrong people, wrong friends or wrong business partners. Its not even that they are "wrong" as such, they just do not match with our expectations. They might be great for someone else but are not great for us. They do not share the same values as we do and thus behave differently.

I can see it very nicely in our business. When we started 2 years back in Singapore, we were just not ready and we didn't deserve to attract quality people and business partners in our business life. However, the trend seems to be changing and the more we grow and the better we get every single day, we start attracting not just better business partners but also better suppliers and better staff . I am really not a psychologist but it's seems to be working that way.

My friend today with whom I had a discussion was right, the way to go about it is to create a community of likeminded people who share the same values. But its not about chasing them but its about living those values and thus attracting likeminded people. It's great to realize it and remind yourself so we can practice it. I for sure will.

Bad day for service industry in Singapore

2007-05-14T23:31:00.000+08:00

Last Friday was a very frustrating day for me and a very bad day for image of the service industry in Singapore, especially for image of SME service companies. It just happened that one day I came across 4 different unbelievable scenarios, all related to my customers or my company, where customer service was just simply horrible. Judge yourself, please.

Scenario No.1: I referred one company, from which I was buying barcode scanners and printers, to my important client. I knew that my client is a bit fussy one so I explained to that company how to deal with my client. Friday afternoon my client was calling me very furios that that man I referred to him promised to come to fix the printer in the morning but hasnt turned up and hasnt called. Feeling very bad, knowing that its pretty critical that barcode printer works non stop, I called my supplier and asked him what happened. I almost fainted when I heard what he was saying - that my client is very bad, that he is expecting him to fix the problem on the spot or give him some other solution while he needs few days to find out what is the problem and also that he is not going to give him a training on how to maintain printer because my client is not buying labels from him. I tried to explain nicely that its not very good strategy to blackmail customers and force them to buy something otherwise no training, but he didnt seem to get it. He was telling me things I seriously havent heard for a very long time in business and I was really disillusioned.

Scenario No. 2: My another client purchased an e-marketing campaign package and the first issue was out on Friday. She was really upset when she was showing us how it turned out to be. She is very cautious about her branding and professionalism and so didnt like the fact that what was supposed to be a professional e-newsletter for her international clients turned out to be an average e-newsletter with very bad logos (with bad resolution) and while articles were supposed to be linked to her website, they were only linked to white pdf document she couldn't look at. She wasnt happy about few other things. We told her not to worry that hopefully this wasnt done on purpose and next time it will be better as they learn from these first mistakes.

Scenario No.3: This happened to the same customer from scenario No. 2 the same day. We were helping her to put articles online through her CMS (which btw was provided by her fellow BNI member) and while doing that we saw that the source is linked to some existing CMS, which cost is S$10 per month. She was really surprised to hear that as she was paying much much more for it to her web guy, who was even claiming that CMS is his company's own one. Well, thats easy to check and unfortunately as I said we did and explained her the difference. Worse, she signed up for 2 years (p.s. on the web of the original CMS company it says that if you sign up for 2 years you get 50% discount, of course she didnt get any). Again disillusionment.

Scenario No. 4: This is my own story and I couldn't believe it either. Its regarding my company secretary. I do not wish this company for any small business in Singapore. Later I will share why I'm so sure about that.
So what happened here goes way back 2 years when we started our company in Singapore. The owner, was the sweetest thing you ever meet at that time. However, it was true till the moment you sign the contract only. I havent heard from her afterwards when I was searching answers for my questions about overcharching us for things she never mentioned before. It was really unbelievable. I got first invoice with S$400 extra and my company secretary 's accountant told me, "ups we forgot to tell you before". Of course, I had to pay as it was about my EP pass so I had no choice and I signed up for 2 years (in illusion that I get better price). Soon, I was also annoyed by the fact that every time I wanted something from the company I had to talk to different people as there was no account manager for the client. If you needed mail you had to talk to mail girl, if anything regarding AGM, another girl, bills another one. I wrote a request for one contact person, but never got reply back. Then I kept receiving very confusing invoices from them and with figures that were shocking. Of course, we wanted an explanation before payment noone really found time to talk to us and explain properly, they just send invoices and kept quiet. So we kept quiet too. After some time in Singapore I started to ask around about that company as by that time I had some friends who were also in company secretary business and surprisingly, not just them but also many other SME business owners I met knew a lot about that company and it was not positive at all. I am really suprised they are still in business. They care nothing about the small customers, it seems.
I was not happy about their mail service either, it happened several times that we got important letters late and when I saw how they manage their mail I wasn't surprised. The worst to me is the fact that I had to remind them things and chase them for mails and when they promised to call me back, they didn't. We didn't pay our fees for the second year as we felt cheated and not being taken care of and the best thing was that noone really seem to care or ask us what is going on. We paid fees maybe 6 months later and 2 months after that, we got email from company requesting the outstanding payment that was actually already paid. Nobody asked for the payment for 6 months and when we paid they were suddenly asking for it.
Well, with all this in mind we decided to terminate our contract with them and I informed lady in accounting department about our decision. That was this March. She never got back to me with answer. As I was busy, I kind of forgot about it and I came to think of it just now as my 2 years expired on May 5. Btw. nobody contacted me that my service is due to end and asked if we want to renew or anything. I called them to tell them I want to terminate our contract with immediate effect and that was my Friday when I got reply from them - I talked to another lady this time. Again, not a single question why I want to terminate or why am I unhappy with them. On the other hand, they told me that because I have not sent in a handwritten notice 3 months ahead I had to pay for next 3 months before I can terminate the contract and of course they bulked in some other nice figures like S$100 for changing auditor, etc. I told them that the lady I talked to in March didnt inform me or reminded me this rule when I contacted her in March and that I really wish to just leave and not to pay for 3 more months. I got official email saying that only after I pay for next 3 months my files will be released, no further discussion. That really pissed me off and I wrote email to the boss, lady No. 1 and lady No. 2 sharing my feelings that their customer service is not the best and that nobody ever asked me why I want to leave, I wrote them my reasons for not being happy also...and the best part is the reply I got from them today...here it is as received:

Dear Dasha,
xxx (owner) has read your email below and has no time to reply to you, hence I’m instructed to tell you this. Kindly take your business somewhere else as you are not happy with us and she has better clients to deal with. Good luck. We will release your files once full payment has been made to us.

Thanks and Regards
xxx

I was shocked to my very core how one company can react to the feedback. Of course, I shared this email, as rare as it is, with some of my business partners and friends. Now, the best part of the story comes. When I shared this story, one of my close business partners told me that he also has bad experience with the same company secretary and the owner and now he prefers to be LLP to avoid company secretaries at all. He got cheated by them for 4K. They didnt do what they were supposed to do in 2003 when he was their client and when he got fine from the government and wanted them to correct the problem, they now wanted to charge him for all these years from 2003 till 2007 official secretary fee (even though he was not their official client anymore), otherwise they will not do anything. I think there are no words to comment on that.
I think company like that should not be allowed to run the business and I am very serious about it. We have controls to check if restaurants have basic hygiene in place, if not, they close them down. I think we should also have controls if companies have basic customer service and integrity in place, if not, they should also be closed down. Unfortunately, the reality is different. I am worried that many companies will fall into the same hole as I did and my friend did and who knows how many other SMEs did. We are a small company and of course we are careful with where we spent our money, because we also serve similar companies as our clients, so we understand what does it mean to be charged even S$100 extra when you do not expect it. Still, we are happy to pay to those who take good care of us and our customers are happy to pay us on time because we take good care of them. My auditor on the other hand for example if the best auditor I could find. I wish I could find company secretary like that.

I am not suprised anymore when some people and competitors tell me that we are spoiling the market by being too nice to our customers. Well, to us, customer service is a religion and no matter what, we will follow what we believe in. Of course, we are humans and make mistakes, but at least admit our mistakes and apologize...some companies are too proud to do that.

Open Source for small business owners

2007-04-22T17:14:00.000+08:00

Being productive & efficient is not “nice to have” anymore, its necessity...even for SMEs

Running the small or mid sized business and enhancing its business efficiency and productivity through automation and implementation of suitable IT software solution has not been a difficult thing to do for quite some time already. More importantly, it's not a “nice to have” option anymore. World is moving from an old Information Age into the new Conceptual Age. What does it mean for us, SME business owners? In short it means that having your business automated and efficient is not a competitive advantage anymore, not even for SME. The new sources of competitive advantage are becoming aspects like design or emotional value of products and services for customers, not delivery or information provided on time.

Sadly, there are still very few SMEs in Singapore that have either looked into “IT challenge” or did something about it. The negative reaction of many SMEs business owners when IT word is even mentioned is very surprising. Excuses about not being IT savvy or high price of IT solutions are no longer valid either. IT solutions are becoming so user friendly that even 5 years old can use them and thanks to initiatives like Open Source, utility computing or agile software development, IT solutions are more affordable then anytime before, even customized ones.

Open Source Movement, for example, hit Singapore long time ago but the response hasn't been very good and I wonder why. Maybe it was not understood properly or natural loyalty to other IT applications historically used in companies or fear from something unknown overtook the message that Open Source tried to communicate to business owners. Open Source became the domain only of IT companies and “IT people” in Singapore and never a domain of business owners who can also benefit from it a lot. Open Source has been around for many years now, its not new anymore, its been tested and proved very efficient and contributional. There is nothing to stop us from fully utilizing it in our businesses.

Open Source is an initiative of IT professionals from all around the world who believe that certain things do not need to be proprietory anymore and can be shared for free for the benefit of all. That's how many amazing softwares, technologies and solutions were created and are open and available to all for utilization. There is of course much more behind it, but as this article is mainly targeted at SME business owners, we can leave the rest to IT experts. All we need to understand is that there are alternatives and options that can be used in the area of IT for our business.

Costly proprietory Microsoft Office suite can be for free substituted with Open Office suite, for which no license fee has to be paid. Open Office is available for download at www.openoffice.org. All you need is to download it into your computer and run it. I have been using it myself since few years back already and I am a very happy user. It took me approximately one day to get used to the slight changes in navigation, but that was all. Open Office documents for example can always be saved as MS documents and thus there is no problem with compatibility. I have not faced one problem with Open Office so far and I am using it on my Mac computer.
I am also using Mozilla Firefox, which is an amazing Internet browser, which I prefer to Internet Explorer or Thunderbird that I use for emails management.

There are many other examples of Open Source applications that can be used for daily business benefits – for example SugarCRM for managing your contacts and customer relations or GnuCash or Compiere for your accounting purposes and many more. There are solutions available for project management, documents management, free shopping carts solutions, content management systems and many more. All are ready to be used and implemented and you do not have to pay a single cent if you know a minimum of downloading them and installing them to your PC or using them on-line.

As I have personally tested SugarCRM, I would like to share my experience. SugarCRM is a Commercial Open Source Customer Relationship Management. It is a great way to start managing and organizing your contacts and communication with them to ensure follow up, to manage your sales pipeline or generate reports. SugarCRM is available for download at www.sugarcrm.com. There are also paid versions available with support and enhanced features if you decide to switch later in the future. SugarCRM is not ideal as my expectations are quite but for the beginning, the free version is more then enough. This way, first step to the world of IT and automation is made very simple, right?

On the other side, Open Source applications have also limitations you need to be aware of:
Applications are usually ready made and you have to use them as they are with no customization unless you are willing to pay extra for someone to customize the application for you. You would still need either internal or external IT expert to maintain and service your application and thats where IT outsourcing companies come in handy. That is how both, customers and IT vendors, can benefit from Open Source if Open Source will be your acceptanble choice to more productive and efficient business or operations. Eventually, everybody grows and benefits and that is exactly what is behind Open Source open sharing initiative.

It has been a busy year

2007-01-22T21:44:00.000+08:00

2006 was marvelous for NextLogic and for me personally. We were so busy that I didn't have time to write a blog since last March. And what was the whole year about?
We have learned many things, about how to run business in Asia and in Singapore, we got our first clients in surrounding Asian countries as well as in Slovakia. I really appreciate whole year and what I have learned about how to run business and about myself too.
Year 2007 is ahead of us and we hope for more exciting things to happen to us (me and Peter as we decided to finally get married after 11 years) and to Nextlogic as well.

Growing pains of traditional Chinese owned companies

2006-03-18T15:34:00.000+08:00

I was just reviewing a report Enterprise insights - market trends (February 2006 issue) published by holistic (and great) Singapore business portal Enterprise One (http://www.business.gov.sg) when I came across section describing strengths and growing pains of Chinese Family-owned companies in Singapore...here is one paragraph that relates to our business..

"Lack of proper management system. Control mechanisms and management systems are lacking in most traditionally managed Chinese organisations. As a consequence, managers spend most of their time reacting to day-to-day operational matters and “fire-fighting”, rather than focusing on pro-active activities such as formulating and implementing long-term plans and strategies. At the same time, proper systems to manage and measure staff performance are often absent; and individual performances are often evaluated on the basis of good conduct rather than measurable targets."

While being out there at the "market" every day I meet lots of business men (and women) and I listen to their stories and most of them are very surprising, even shocking but also inspiring. Many times I see Singapore based companies (even small family owned ones) as a big role models to other organizations. I assume they have systems and strategies in place and that is why they have been around for many years. However, its not necessarily true and the more stories I know, the clearer picture I get and I realize how true the article is and how much it sometimes doesn't matter...but sometimes does.

I have heard the following story recently. There is one family business owned by Chinese that has been established 30 years ago and its successful. The business is still around, second generation is running it and everything seems fine, the number of customers and their expectations is growing .... When I asked the owner about their management systems in place, she said that first ten years there was no need for any system as all customers were remembered by heart and everybody was doing everything anyway. Then its never been a priority to define or automate the system and Excel has been serving them quite well. However, these days they start feeling overwhelmed without proper IT management system in place and they are thinking of getting one. .....

What striked me the most is the fact that business that has been around for 30 years has still the same system it started with, there is same number of employees handling it and that number of customers did not reach 500 yet. I am not saying its wrong, its no. I do admire this business and this family that have been committed to this business and has run it from the heart for so many years - they just do not want to grow, its their choice and maybe they really do not need any proper management system in place. Maybe it would destroy the real flavor of traditional family run business, which is their biggest asset when it comes to customers loyalty and satisfaction. As long as they do a good job, everything is in place, right?

Those are small inspiring stories for me that makes me believe in my business even more. And hope to see NextLogic around in 30 years.

NextLogic on demand software.

2006-02-26T13:11:00.000+08:00

NextLogic just launched first on demand software or software as a service. It's called SBS - Small Business Solution. SBS is an on demand software for start up companies, sole proprietors, small businesses and self employed agents. It comprises most important functionality for running business like simple contact management and communication tracking, products management, generation of quotations, sales orders, invoices and also receivables and payments. (http://sbs.nextlogic.org)

The objective is to help small companies to run their businesses smoother and in a more organized way, so they can grow in the future easily. We also added mass email and mass sms as value added features, which can help to generate awarness and maybe also extra revenue if used wisely.

On demand software or software as a service is a new approach to software implementation or software "selling" these days. Not that we want to be trendy or anything, but based on our own experience, we see its benefits compared to traditional software and would like to briefly and simply introduce them to our target audience - SMEs.

So, what is software on demand?
There can be many disputes raised if on demand software - software as a service - utility computing software is the same thing or not? There are slight differences but for the purpose of keeping it simple and understandable, we would refer to all these terms as if they would be the same thing as the main principle is the same.

Software on demand transforms the point of view on software. Software is no longer a commodity, a product you can buy either of the shelf as the packaged solution or from software vendor as a customized software solution. Nowadays, you can purchase software as a service and use it only when you need it (or when there is a demand from your side for it).

To give you simple example from life to understand better:
In order to use electricity, you do not buy a powerplant and produce your own electricity, right? You just subscribe to electricity provider and pay for the electricity used on a monthly basis plus some extra cost comes as first time subscribtion fee and some maintenance cost.

With software on demand or utility computing solutions is the same thing - you do not need to buy the whole solution and run in on your own computer anymore and pay for user or other licenses. You just select a software vendor that provides solution you are looking for, the solution can be initially customized for your needs and you can access the solution over the Internet any time you want to and use it only as much as you need to. The rest is the responsibility of the software provider - hosting, maintenance, upgrades, security, back ups, customer support, etc.

Payment structures for these kind of solutions can vary from one standard monthly fee, monthly fee per every user, monthly fee per transactions made, etc. Generally, you have to commit and subscribe to the provider for a minimum of 1 - 3 years.

ADVANTAGES:
- very cost efficient - the savings compared to traditional software purchase can be amazing (lower upfront cost, lower maintenance cost, less headache in managing all aspects of the computer system in house, saved time during implementation, saved on license cost, etc.)
- pro business oriented - upgrades to the solution are provided on a regular basis based on feedback from many business users of the solution
- less risky - if the project fails at least you have not spent so much time and money in it already (which happens to many software projects nowadays for many different reasons)

DISADVANTAGES or CONCERNS:
- security - is a major concern for small and big companies, truth is that nowadays accessing data over the Internet from highly protected servers and through encryption of data and security certificates, etc. that software providers offer in the package, is much safer way than keeping data in your company servers where feeling that data are secure is higher but in reality security of data is much more questionable
- less flexibility - on demand software solutions offered to many companies can easily become "on line off the shelf" solutions where standarization can take over the real need behind company automation, thus you have to be careful that solution that you get can easily be adjusted to your needs and customized, otherwise its not worth the investment either
- service - eventhough provided as a service, many providers fail in providing the real service to rapidly growing number of software users (maybe thats why also salesforce.com is currently loosing many customers daily). No matter how great the idea is, if service is not good, run away from the provider as soon as possible because this concern or disadvantage can prevail all advantages and benefits that on demand software solution can offer to the company (small and a big one too).

What our software solutions can do for you.

2006-02-25T19:46:00.000+08:00

I took some time to think where we actually really fit into daily life of a small or medium sized company. And here is what I came up with. Its a simple structure that "rules" our approach towards our customers.

NextLogic software solutions:

Automate your “business core”.
Automate your “business uniqueness”.
Automate your “business growth”.

“Business core” is MUST

Business core is the minimum that needs to be done in order to run the business. You have it and your competitors have it as well.

“Business uniqueness” is SHOULD

Business uniqueness is something you have or should have and your competitors would like have too. It is something that differentiates you from your competitors – makes you unique, special and that is the reason why customers come back to you.

“Business growth” is WANT

Business growth is something everybody running the business wants, maybe growth size-wise (open new branches) , maybe location-wise (become international organization) or money-wise (increase profits). Growth is defined by each and every organization in different ways, different words but bottom line they want to grow and progress.

1. YOUR CURRENT SITUATION

You do not have enough money to hire enough people so you and your current employees are doing what is must. Because you are doing everything manually, it takes all your resources – people, time, money and you have no time to focus on business unique or business growth activities.

2. YOUR ACTION TOWARDS BUSINESS UNIQUENESS & GROWTH

You can have a look at our SBS - Small Business Solution that can help you to automate some of your basic processes, so you and your people can have more time to focus on your WANTS. SBS is a software "warming up" exercise. Check it at http://sbs.nextlogic.org

3. YOUR NEW SITUATION

After warming up you might realize that you need more and you come back to us. Within 3 – 4 months NextLogic creates a simple software application for you with features and characteristics you specify. The system reflects the way you are running your business, it is customized for your needs. The system helps you to be more efficient and effective and thus save your resources to focus on your WANTS as promised.

FAQs about NextLogic product

2006-02-25T19:27:00.000+08:00

My customers or potential customers always ask me similar questions. I thought of summarising them here too. The rest can be found at our website
http://www.nextlogic.org/index.php?file=faq.html

Frequently Asked Questions about our PRODUCTS & SERVICES:

What is the payback period for the new customized software solution? Is it worth?

For the software that can be finished within 1 - 2 months by team of up to 3 team members, you would have to pay about US$3 - 6,000. Of course prices are being localized. Even a small business can afford such a customized solution because even if the payback period would be 6 months, it will bring the affect and savings for the period of minimum 2 – 3 years when it has to be updated again to reflect your business growth.

Did I have to invest something extra for the Internet connection or new computer?

No, for our solution your old PC would be most probably enough and NextLogic will provide you with server space for hosting of your solution. The server price is included in the annual maintenance price, which is usually 10 - 15% of the development cost each year. It is suitable for initial simple software solution, but might be upgraded in the future if the application grows. Of course, you need to have Internet connection. Our solutions are optimized for Mozilla Firefox web browser, which is available for free.

Do I have to pay everything at once on delivery?

You pay based on iterations. One iteration takes usually 2 weeks to one month. Every month a working application is delivered to you based on the priorities set for the development. Thus, your payment is split into 3 to 4 payments till you get the final solution. The option is also to just “rent” the application from NextLogic and pay a smaller amount every month for minimum of 2 – 3 years.

Do I have to attend some training to know how to use the system? Is it included in the price?

We develop systems that are simple and user friendly. Our philosophy is that less is sometimes more. System reflects what you are doing everyday so well, you will be very familiar with the process and can follow the logic behind the screens very easily. You are also fully involved in the development process and every month you see the application, you can use it, you can test it immediately, you do not have to wait until it is complete. Thus you do not need any extra training after system is completed. In practice, we provide orientation to the software application for 2 – 3 main users of the system for free. Additonally, if customer buys annual maintenance, training for new users is included.

Who is maintaining the system for me, how much extra does it cost ?

System can be maintained by NextLogic as a part of annual maintenance contract for 10 -15% of the development cost.

If I want to add some functionality or features to the system, how does it work?

You will inform us about your requirements, we meet you, discuss the requirements, plan how much time it would take and add the functionality to the system. New features can be added anytime and every new development phase you would pay amount comparable to the price you paid at the beginning. (If the whole system currently has for example 30 main features and functionalities and you require additional 10, you would pay 1/3 of the price you initially paid.)

How is the system licensed? Do I have to buy new licenses for every new user?

The system developed for you is one of its kind. You own the system and can use it for your business. You have a full license for the system, for using it, sharing it with other employees, even installing on another server. What you cannot do is to re-sell the system to the third party. To sum up, there are no user or server license fees on our solutions. Source code is also provided to you.

What if my new employees want to use the system too. Can they use it at the same time?

The question is if more users can use the system at the same time. The answer is yes, system can be used concurrently and all changes users make will be updated in real time.

I can buy an out of the box solution. That would be cheaper and faster, right?

You can certainly do that. Or you could ask any other software vendor to develop a solution according to your needs. There are many options but consider following challenges:

standard solution is suitable for automating business core (standard) processes only because the solution needs to fit all (f.e accounting software)
basically it means you have to adjust your business flow to the system, system will not adjust to you
standard solution usually covers one function of the core business (or few of them) as complete solution combining different aspects of business would be far more expensive and it is usually called ERP solution
standard solution can also be customized or functionality can be added, the problem is that if you want only 2 features you need to buy the whole extra module with 10 other features you do not need now (maybe not even in the future)
standard solutions are overcomplicated or too simple to reflect just what you need, not more and not less
standard solutions want to cover as many different ways of doing business as possible and thus usually have way too many functions and buttons you will never use
customized solutions on the other hand are usually too expensive for small companies and they cannot afford them

How come then that NextLogic provides customization and still at the affordable price? Where is the trick?

The trick is first of all in the reason of the existence of our company. We have a passion for contribution that brings growth and progress to all and we believe all small or medium sized companies can and should grow. We want to help. In this state of mind, we are trying to find the best way of how to develop the applications to be useful and still affordable. Our secret lies partially in utilizing Open Source resources that we rationally use for the cost and quality benefit of our customers, we also use such a technologies that will be easy to change and moderate when system will be growing (f.e. Java / Ruby).

Also, we apply agile software development approach, which is meant to eliminate double work and mistakes by heavily involving customer into the process of application development. We work with the customer from a very first day and show him regularly everything we develop to make sure that every feature and functionality in the system is wanted, needed and will be used.

We try not to waste our resources (time) and resources of our customers (money) at the same time. Instead of spending months writing long requirement documents or proposals, we prefer simple face to face communication, one page proposal that will cover most important things for the initial phase of the system development because we expect requirements to change over time as system is being developed. We try to stay as flexible as possible.

Long term partnerships - mirage or necessity?

2006-02-19T13:55:00.000+08:00

NextLogic instantly looks for business partners, just like any other businesses I believe. Suprisingly, there are many responses to our long term partnerships initiative. Honestly, I thought it will be more difficult to get a real long term partner with integrity sharing your values and views for the business. So, where is the catch?

Long term partnership became another well sound business buzz word that is being misused in many unethical ways nowadays. It is sad but it is true. I still believe in every single entrepreneur that comes to me offering long term partnership and I trust them they really mean it, BUT we have learned our lesson too. Of course, not every partnership needs to turn to be a perfect one, but if too many of them end up in the same scenario, then we have a situation to think about.

From our own experience, we have learned that many "smart entrepreneurs" use long term partnership phrase to get certain products or services at a very cheap cost in the initial stage for a sake of long term partnership. It always sounds very nice and promising. Have you ever come across people promising you big projects and contracts in the future but first you have to prove how good you really are by giving them something for free or at your cost price? And how many times you invested hours and days coming up with solutions hoping for long term benefits and revenues, which never came at the end?

Long term partnership can only work, and now we know, if both parties are willing to share and invest equally all resources (time, money, knowledge, skills, etc.) from the very beginning. We still believe long term partnerships and partners are inevitable for the success of our business, we just have to be more careful in selecting our partners.

Our "selection process" is very simple. We "only" have few criteria our potential furure partners have to meet:
1. share the values that we share for our business
2. share the investments and outcomes equally from the very beginning

Customer support 24/7 - promise or reality?

2006-02-19T13:33:00.000+08:00

My customer from Malaysia went to Africa for one week to train their staff there on the software we have developed for them. That's something we really love to see happening because first hand feedback can be obtained very easily this way. Unfortunately, my customer got so nervous from that simple training he was supposed to do that he forgot many things about the software, even features he personally requested.

Suddenly, he was writing me email saying that there are many bugs in the software and he has a presentation in 1 hour for all managers. We exchanged few emails and I realized, its not bugs but just simple problems in business flow he is facing. Somehow, he did not understand what I was trying to tell him over email. I believe a bit of stress can do wonders. So I took him on skype as I thought it would be more efficient conversation. It was about 10pm in Malaysia when we started to chat over skype as he didnt have mic to talk and Internet connection in Africa was a bit slow.

As there was no training manual cause the application was really small and simple, I had to navigate him over skype through some basics. I managed to quicky screenshot the application and send it over to him so he can see how search screen should look like when trying to get some results, etc. He was immediately trying and after half an hour of intensive "chat" everything seemed OK. This was first country where our software was supposed to be used and beginnings are always more difficult. However, I realized how different it is when customer just browses through the system and confirms that everything works fine (which is a responsibility of a client to go through and final test the solution) and when real users try to use it for the first time. Suddenly, so many things come up we have not seen before. Once again I realized how important our agile software development approach is in developing proper software solutions that work for end users.

Nevertheless, my customer went for the presentation and after one hour I got last message from him that everything went fine and there were no bugs or errors of any kind during the final training with managers. I felt releaved. Its not that just we are promising 24/7 customer support, we actually really do it. Not talking about the fact that at the same time I was navigating another customer in Singapore though his system too. All thanks to Skype.

Stories I hear daily

2006-02-11T23:48:00.000+08:00

In the position of marketing and sales person I meet customers, partners, people daily. I listen to them and trying to learn, to see where we as NextLogic can fit, can assist.

There is one story that I continusoly hear from people I meet (especially in Malaysia), which is very hard to respond to, because I myself know its so true.

The story goes something like this:
"We have tried IT before, we invested lots of money, we built our website, CRM and then the IT guy dissappeared and our website and data got lost with him. Then we tried again, this time not a freelancer because it was so hard to follow up with them and there was no support, instead we tried small IT company. After few payments and not delivered work, they also dissappeared. We don't trust IT and IT companies anymore. Its safer to keep everything manual in paper books. We don't even want to try again."

I believe every industry has story like this. There are many companies that just do not take the responsibility given and spoil the image of the industry in general. But many times the problem is on both sides. If IT partner is not selected properly (or any business partner), even if you mean to spend just little money at first, dissapointment would come sooner or later.

I know it very well from our personal experience. We also had partners that cheated on us and were very unfair. What to do with this situation? I always tell these people who tell me these stories one line from my favourite song - Fool me once - shame on you, fool me twice - shame on me. It might not seem very IT related, but I believe, it is generally life related and can be easily applied in business too.

Companies, no matter how small they are (and especially small ones) literally cannot afford to get fooled twice in one area of business. They should be proactive and study and learn how to make it differently and better the next time. However, there are only few entepreneurs like that and those usually turn to be our best customers if we find them or if they find us. Its a perfect match when we find each other. Thats this famous 20% that creates 80% of your business, which is perfectly OK, because you create a value to them they see, understand and are willing to pay for.

The rest is 80% of "IT heartbroken" companies and entrepreneurs who are not willing and able to open up and listen to what honest IT companies have to say and thats our daily struggle. But, of course, we fight and are willing to spend more time on educating them, its our duty and we are happy to fulfill it. Some businessmen call it charity and stress to focus on profitable customers only, for us its a philosophy of our business life or long term investment of our time and resources believing that things and people can change.

Agile IT

2006-01-12T21:41:00.000+08:00

Today's blog is specially dedicated to Peter who is 27 today and due to some work commitments I did not have time to give him any other present (besides birthday papaya for breakfast).

To keep it short and sweet, I had a meeting today with XYZ guy from XYZ company. NextLogic & XYZ company are thinking of becoming partners in the future. We do similar things, we develop complimentary solutions and target complimentary customers. The conversation went great, I was happy that XYZ company has similar interests and we found many synergies. I decided to do the last check, which I do with every possible future partner (not that we are so big to be that selective, but we are ....selective). The most important part is to identify how the future partner really thinks and feels by identifying their vision, mission, why they do business and how they do business. I just wanted to know if we are aligned.

I asked an innocent question: “So how long does it take you to develop and implement a simple web based portal for smaller company. I suppose a month???”

The response: “Well, one month is usually just paper work and identifying the needs.”

Dasha: “Hmm, OK..and are those small guys willing to pay for additional “paperwork” if they are buying a software solution to actually get rid of it?”

XYZ: “If they are not willing, we find someone else who is willing and can afford.”

Well, I am not here to judge, but I felt like I have to tell him about GREAT agile software development approach.

Dasha:

“See, XYZ, we usually agile it a bit. We meet a customer for initial meeting – 2-3 hours where we define simple vision for the project and few milestones. Then we get down to the actual work and define what needs to be done immediately in one week. We usually come up with one main function to be implemented and developed in first week itself.

We go back, develop that “piece from a cake” and meet customer again (once a week for smaller projects) together we test it, collect feedback, change it, implement it and move on to the second feature. While developing second feature, customer already uses the first one and provides additional feedback and changes requirements.

Its simple, its interactive, we don't waste our time and money and most importantly, we don't waste resources of our customers. At the end no special training or implementation is required as customer already knows the solution very well.”

XYZ: “Interesting....”

Agile software development approach might not be for everyone, but it works well for NextLogic. Software development is thanks to it more interesting and fun and we are not just building more quality solutions, but we are building loyal customers and even making some friends. Great rewards for us...and thank you to people who thought us agile software development principles .... read more at http://agilemanifesto.org/

Differentiate yourself...

2005-12-28T16:41:00.000+08:00

The other day we went with Peter for ASME (Association of Small and Medium Enterprises in Singapore) networking night. We love those events - you can meet lots of business men and other interesting people and networking is one of the major ways to do business in Asia (we think so far :o).
Looking forward to the event, we stepped inside and first enthusiastic networker approached us with huge smile and question of what we do and how can we cooperate together..... Nice, thats what we came for, let's get straight to the point. So we started explaining, as so many times before, what we do and how we do it. Before we could elaborate on anything, he interrupted us after first our sentence that there are 10 other guys doing the same thing in there and he already talked to them so he knows what we do.......We were struck with the shock and horror.....

To sum up, it takes one sentence that gives you a chance to talk about your business further, either you do it or you are one of the many. Yup, correct - seems like we still haven't found (to prave orechove) the main thing to differentiate us..or rather we believe we did, but we still did not manage to efficiently word it so strangers get it with our first sentence and they will feel like its something special. We know that there are many software companies BUT we also know that there are only few that can be compared to us...but we have to pass this message to others too and that's where real troubles start.

We discussed since that time and even before so many times how we shall word it so people get it and how to uniquely position ourselves among thousads of other software companies at the market and IT'S NOT EASY. I guess the only way is to go OUT THERE as much as possible and test as many different speeches as possible cause what REALLY differentiates us is not what people out there want to hear anyway.

Being responsible for marketing, this is even more frustrating for me, I know why marketing is important and I want to do it right way, but nowadays it seems like its all just about naming simple things fancy ways to describe yourself in sound way that is different to others and thats what I dont like.

Thus, I decided to practice the old classics marketing way :o)..Keep it simple and straitforward - We are NextLogic, we provide quality, efficient & affordable business software solutions to small & medium sized companies. The only way I can prove it at this stage is the fact that 80% of our existing business comes from referrals from our existing customers who are happy with us and want more and more. .....And of course we are working on our branding, cause I just read today that ...
Ignoring branding (even for SMEs) in this century is a commercial suicide....Not that we care if something is commercially right or wrong, we just believe in branding and want to build NextLogic brand like parents want to have successful kids :o)

So we are working hard to differentiate ourselves right now

BNI story

2005-12-13T11:16:00.000+08:00

I just arrived back to office after my usual Tuesday morning business breakfast in BNI. I would like to share why I wake up every Tuesday morning at 5:30am to participate at those meetings.
What is all fuss about? I am not gonna go too much into official explanation of BNI as it can be found at our official website (www.bnimalaysia.com) and its done by people who have been through all this for much longer time so no point going into their area. It is more about how I feel about it, what it gives me or rather what it allows me and my company to give others.

BNI stands for Business Network International, its 15 years old networking and business referral organization and it has many chapters in Malaysia as well as in 15 other countries if I am right. First of all the organization itself reminds me AIESEC I was member of for many years. I found another organization where I can feel like part of the group of people that have the same problems and ideals about their business as I do.
Yes, of course firstly we meet every week to exchange business referrals and practive word of mouth marketing (which definately work and especially in Malaysia or rather in Asia in general), but what inspires me the most is still the higher and deeper vision behind BNI. I guess I am always happy to do things that have more contributional value to other people lives or other people businesses.
I literally love BNI philosophy, which says GIVERS GAIN - Its like I have always done it and believed in it but never word it so precisely. All my motivation comes from here - motivation and inspiration to go and do whatever it takes to make it work and happen.

I want to give, I want my company to give - to give very good service and products that will positively change someone's corporate live - its that small piece we can contribute to each other. And we definately give lots of quality for very cheap money, why we do it? Make no business sense???
Because we believe that Givers eventually really gain. I might not earn a lot on solutions i develop for my BNI fellows for example but the feeling that it might help these small entrepreneurs to realize their dreams and run their businesses a bit smoother feels great and thats all I need. And again we all in NextLogic strongly believe that great things are waiting somewhere out there for good people with genuine intentions like we all have in BNI. Well, I cannot talk on behalf of all but at least for my Millenium chapter and especially few individuals that already gained my trust no matter what. Thanks a lot Fawziah - slimming undergarment trading (my first ever BNI customer), Raja - art gallery owner (www.pelitahati.com.my), Rebecca - our company secretary (www.e-latterrain.com) , Chloe - our cake lady, Alice - our messy accounts expert accountant as well as Chee - our nutrition expert. Owe you all a lot.

How would you travel to...Penang??

2005-12-12T11:35:00.000+08:00

I had a presentation about our company in front of the group of small business owners. I had to come up with simple explanation of why small companies should go for customized software solutions when market is jammed with so many cheap of the shelf solutions.

Finally, we came up with great example on which I explained the difference. I asked them a question - How would you travel to Penang and why? The presentation was held in Malaysia, thats why Penang :o). Penang is a city approx. 5 hours drive away from KL by car.
After asking a question - we had a little discussion and all people agreed that to save time and keep flexibility and convenience they would travel to Penang by car.
(You have to consider that I was asking the question from business point of view, where most of business owners value the most their time and convenience :o). This example wouldn't work in other scenarios that well.)

What is the paralel to making a business decision about what kind of software solution to use in your daily company life???

in PAPER - many small companies still use paper for everything - they write quotations and invoices in hand, they use paper notebooks to monitor daily or monthly sales, etc. It is a great way but of course very time consuming and not very efficient, especially if you have more than 10 customers or over 20 - 50 business transactions a month. I compared using paper to travelling to Penang by bicycle - it is a tool you can use(just like paper), but you would come to Penang not in 5 hours but in 15 hors or more, you would be very tired and with no energy to perform whatever you planned to do....would it be a smart decision? (Maybe if you go to Penang for holiday and you need to kill some time, but not when you are going to close important business deal, right?)

in EXCEL - many companies (even bigger ones) still hire people just to handle reports and manage data in Excel, Excel is a marvellous tool but 99% of the people that are using it can utilize barely 10-20% of its possible functionality, sometimes using Excel in a right way can be more difficult than using some automated software solution BUT still in a way Excel is customized solution - you define the process and required output yourself, it saves some time but still its not very efficient......It is like travelling to Penang by motorbike - you have the flexibility of deciding what time to go, when to stop but it would take you again at least 7 - 8 hours to get to Penang and it would be tiring too, which is moderate wasting of your valuable time & energy you can spend somewhere else

in OF THE SHELF SOLUTION - there are many companies (and unfortunately many consultants pushing customers to this) who just buy any solution available at the market (many times just because its cheap and you do not need to invest any time in defining it as its already done) and then adjust company operations to the solution - its very convenient solution - why??? As I said, it doesnt really require to know anything about the business or industry, company can take whatever is given and use it, many times again only very little percentage of the possible functionalities is used due to NO NEED ot NO IDEA on how to utilize them for company business - BUT its a nature of people to go for as much as possible for as little money as possible.
When comparing any off the shelf solution to Excel I prefer and recommend Excel - because no matter what, Excel is adjusted to company's way of doing business, of the shelf solution is adjusted to hundreds of companies in the same industry and thus unnecessarily overloaded with buttons and functionalities that will never be used, will confuse users and at the end company achieves less operational efficiency than with Excel.
Again comparison to travelling to Penang - its like travelling by bus - its more convenient than bicycle or motorbike, you just come and pay and go, no need to think or drive (put some extra effort to achieve desired outcome) BUT you have no control over what time to go, where to stop, etc. because bus company has a schedule and routines you as a passenger have to follow and again it will be more time consuming than travelling by your own car and much less efficient....

in RIGHT SOFTWARE SOLUTION - Here, RIGHT software solution comes into the picture = software solution that helps your company to save time, which you can in return invest in activities that matter - sales or customers service, etc.

Right software solution in your company is like travelling to Penang by your own car driving it - yes, there is higher initial investment & direct responsibility (you also need to know how to drive) BUT it gives you all flexibility you need to travel anytime you want, as fast as you want, you can adjust your own seat to your needs, etc......similarly RIGHT software solution requires higher initial investment, not just money but mainly time and your know how about your business so it can really reflect what is happening in your company and automate it efficiently to achieve desired outcome. From a long term perspective it pays off much more.

Generally, there are many business owners who will never understand the beauty of customized software solution because they do not understand the beauty of their own business fully - ONLY people who know what they want and how they want it will not stop there and would always go for the BEST solution (not the second or third best solution....)

What do you think???
How would YOU travel to Penang?

Useful resources

2005-11-14T14:28:00.003+08:00

We have just added new link to our website - useful resources. I know its nothing special, but it came to my mind just today when I was preparing for my BNI presentation. I will dedicate one whole blog entry to explain what is BNI so I am not gonna explain it here. So I was trying to prepare some handout for my BNI fellows that would be something useful and memorable for their businesses after my presentation and I came up with something called SME customized software purchase checklist. I know, even from my experience, that it is more troublesome to persuade SMEs to go for customized software solution at the first place, only then comes the hurdle of making sure you go for the correct solution or rather for correct vendor, but at the end of the day it does not matter if customized or standard, if NextLogic or other software vendor, but how much the system will actually help.
And that's why we did something that many software companies would not do - its simple checklist, but it covers all areas a company that doesn't have much IT experience should consider when purchasing solution or selecting IT vendor. Many software companies, unfortunately prefer not to educate their customers so they can benefit from their "IT illiteracy" let's say.
It's again very common and we all know about it. Software guy comes, throw some small initial number and company would go for it as the cheapest solution. Then they sign some overwhelming system requiremenst document and they are expecting great system to come and help their business. But at the end of the day what they get is - solution that doesn't work and changes would be too expensive, training was not included in the price and additional cost is too hight, software vendor is charging them lots of money for application maintenance and still they do not get basic things like bugs fixing (unless they pay extra) and many other troubles. I am not surprised companies do not trust software companies anymore, there are so many of us at the market that spoiled the image of the industry. Now small companies would rather go for expensive Microsoft or SAP solutions just to make sure quality will be there.

Well, even for us its definately difficult to gain the trust of people but it is still much easier than gain the trust of companies back AGAIN after they've experienced something negative. So the main objective of our checklist is a piece of help for small or not experienced companies - its a list of things to check before you go into any next relationship with software company. I am know it's sad, but it has to be done....even in 21st century and highly customer oriented BOOM many companies care more about something else than their customers. Do not forget to check also NextLogic in all areas we mentioned, you never know, I might be lying too :o)

How to make it faster, better, cheaper....

2005-11-03T23:13:00.000+08:00

This week has been very quiet at work. Not for me and Peter but for our staff and in general. Tuesday was Deepavali and today is Hari Raya. We are quite busy though. Peter finally got his new book - "Ruby on rails" so he is studying and working on our latest project. I wanted to describe the system but realized that it is such a hybrid and so customized to our small entrepreneur for whom we are developing it, that no standard name like CRM or inventory control system would work here.

It is a system that will capture all purchases done by customers and their easy payments calendar. It enables our customer to easily monitor, which buyer owes how much and reminders will be generated on due dates. We will also add mass e-mail and mass sms fucntionality so she can inform her customers about new products she carries. Its a bit of everything, just the way she wanted it.
It is a very simple project - that kind of type we are hoping to work on more and more. Those are these real small companies we are targetting. We believe they can benefit from our customized solutions and grow their companies because they are able to handle more transactions with help of proper system (even if they are just one man show).

If anyone says customized and small and cheap doesn't go together, ask them to read this blog. I will try to explain step by step and day by day here how we do it. We do not mind competitors copying is, as we are not using anything new or just invented - all methods we apply are years old and used in many companies - pity though that not many software companies want to adopt them, because they are of course not the easiet way to go around software development. They require lots of abilities and willingness that only few most passionate people can gain through disciplined learning and deeper meaning behing doing it other than just making money. (I will touch on that topic later when explaining our vision, mission, philosophy and our values)

It took Peter about 3 days so far to develop that solution in Java, but it is not fully ready yet. He feels, that even though Java is a great and advanced programming language, it takes too much time to develop such simple solutions in it. He doesn't want to comprimise on quality though so wouldn't use PHP ...and that's the main reason why he is studying Ruby on rails now. It is supposed to be also object oriented language but many things should be easier and faster to develop in it. I am sure he would add some blog here to explain better. I am just capturing it here this way, cause those kind of problems are ones we have to deal with daily to adjust the way of doing things to make solutions better, faster, cheaper - cause all customers of course expect that.

Peter was just showing me what he learned from first 8 lessons he completed already from his new book, so far it looks great. Looks like Ruby on rails works faster....but psst as its still too early to make conclusions. I will add update on that later.

2005-11-02T21:23:00.000+08:00

This is Peter - founder and CEO of NextLogic. Peter is "only" 27 years old but with almost 10 years of active experience in IT field and last 5 years mainly in software solutions development. I never seen anybody in my life learning faster new programming languages than Peter (I don't doubt that there are many, but unfortunately I didn't have a chance to meet them). Just within last 2 years he mastered Java, Hibernate, Spring, Ruby and Ajax. He wouldn't use VB.net, C++ or PHP anymore due to their limitations I do not even want to understand (but I do a bit :o)).

I admire Peter for his eagerness to always learn more and do things better and for his unconditional persistency. Working with him is rather challenging. He usually discovers something new and better in the middle of one project and wants to improve the solution immediately. I know its great, because all he has in mind is the quality of the output and the actual value of the solution he and his team creates for customer, but its rather difficult to run our small business profitably this way :o).

However, bottom line, no matter how I might disagree with some of his tactics in these battles of our "business war", I know they are all for the best of our customers and that's "all" I as Marketing Manager care about.

Peter is an amazing person too (not just as IT guy, business partner ...and boyfriend:o)), he also posseses all complimentary personality traits and characteristics to me - he is very patient (he understands that Rome wasn't built in a night), he is emotionally intelligent, he is a good listner, good cook :o) and always always finds appropriate example to explain things which I just cannot comprehend. I have learned a lot from him and I believe we are a great combination. I also hope it will help us in our business.

I also have to mention here what happened to us yesterday (or rather to Peter). It is a great reflection of WHO Peter is and HOW he thinks.
As usual Peter wanted to buy some new book from his favourite online publisher Pragmatic Programmer but he faced some problems with online ordering. He wrote immediately to the helpdesk asking for help as he didn't want to wait. He wanted to start reading and learning that same night.
Within minutes some Dave Thomas replied back (now for me Dave Thomas is someone I don't know, but for Peter Dave Thomas is SOMEONE). He was so excited from getting an email from an author of his favourite books about latest improvements in software development that he couldn't sleep and wanted me to help him organize a conference in Singapore. Why? Because he also wants to be able to experience those great IT conferences that are currently held mainly in USA. I bet, we will organize that conference soon :o).
I guess we all have our idols - professionally for Peter it is definately Martin Fowler , Dave Thomas and other "fathers" of agile software development, object oriented programming and other latest technology improvements pioneers. Those are people whose ideas and beliefs are shaping NextLogic's decisions and strategies too, so I just though I mention them here.

2005-11-02T04:55:00.000+08:00

This is me Dasha. I am 26 years old and I have tried many jobs in my life. Negative person would say I am a job hopper, positive one would say I gained lots of diverse exprience, which I can benefit from now when running my own company with Peter. Due to the fact that at the moment I still classify myself as rather negative person (but with lots of optimism) I also use my work history as an excuse to run away from more jobs like that and started my own business. Suffering for the bad you are responsible for and you can change is still much better than just suffering, right?
So that's how we started - me dissapointed from my previous jobs but still with lots of ideas and energy I am not going to "sell" that easy anymore and Peter - brain & soul of our company with lots of knowledge, experience, competence and passion for software solutions development. Perfect combination to start small software company. So we did.