Hey, boss: This startup wants to be your all-around sidekick

Alpha7 wants SMEs to join the Cloud.

Being a company’s Chief Executive Officer (CEO) sounds like an extremely glamorous title. But heading a firm, particularly a small one, is not as fabulous as the movies make it look.

Alpha7 founder Lynette Seah knows that CEOs of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are often harried by the demands of running a company without the help of a right-hand man. While CEOs of multinationals and other big firms can rely on a Chief Operating Officer (COO) for assistance, smaller entrepreneurs usually do not have this luxury.

Alpha7 is a Singapore-based technology start-up. Its unique offering is Chief Operating Officer as a Service (COOaaS), which solves an addressable and existing business problem – the lack of a formally appointed COO. It also addresses the gap between an SME's people, processes and technology.

“Alpha7/COOaaS provides outsourced COO services and solutions, as well assists with the execution of these solutions. The pain point our business addresses is the fact that the majority of SMEs in Singapore and Southeast Asia do not have a COO. Without the COO, the CEO takes over the function, stretching an already stretched business leader,” Seah said.

COOaaS works by providing COO expertise to businesses on an outsourced, part-time, retainer or project basis. The service is extended with its COOaaS platform solution that businesses can adopt to connect their front end of their business to their back end applications

Seah believes that Alpha7 will help local SMEs answer the government’s push for greater productivity, which is bogged down by the lack of a defined framework that allows SMEs to do this independently.

“The various consultancy companies and solution providers listed under each government grant largely fill advisory roles or solution specific applications and do not provide end to end advisory, solutions and execution services - we do. We consider ourselves to be the only one with advisory, assessment, technical and execution expertise for SMEs in Singapore and SEA,” Seah noted.

After seeing the benefits that cloud technology brings to businesses across the world, Seah wants to convince SMEs to jump onto the cloud bandwagon as well.

“I experienced the benefits of cloud in businesses and I noted the lag in adoption in businesses in Asia for many reasons. The challenge here is to evangelise to those who want to be equipped as there are still many business owners out there who are not open to technology nor willing to invest in technology to grow and scale their business in the region,” she said.

To-date, Alpha7 has raised $3.6 million in seed funding, from its founder and private investors. It currently caters to SMEs located in Singapore and Southeast Asia. It will also target companies from the USA, UK, and Australia, and aims to open an Australia office in the second half of 2015.

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COMPANY PROFILE

Company Name: Alpha7
Founders: Lynette Seah
Website: www.alpha7.com.sg
Total funding at hand: SGD3,600,000
Source of Funding: Internal Funding and Private Investors
Start of Operations: January 2014

For startups wanting to be featured, send your message to Lee Anne Babierra at [email protected]