How Singapore SMEs can maintain the slight edge

In order for Singapore SMEs to be excellent, they need to gain a certain competitive edge. This competitive edge is also known as the slight edge.

Champion athletes differ from the silver medalists by just a slight edge.

Golfers win the tournament with slightly lesser strokes. Swimmers win the race by touching the wall just milliseconds ahead of their competitors.

Every successful business also needs to have the slight edge.

Let’s look carefully at 3 attributes in which 3 excellent SMES posses that are key to sustaining the slight edge. These include having a strong focus on customer needs; valuing their people and business partners; as well as visionary leadership that invests in the future.

STRONG FOCUS ON CUSTOMER NEEDS

NetProfitQuest (NPQ) is a marketing technology company that provides other SMEs and corporations with innovative marketing techniques.

In an industry whereby anyone can claim to be a social media specialist and an app developer, NPQ focus on their strengths to constantly deliver the slight edge.

They focus strongly on their customer needs, by providing monthly app clinics to their clients. 70% of clients do not understand how to maximise the functional capabilities of certain marketing products.

Therefore these monthly app clinics enable their clients to clarify their doubts with the training staff in NPQ. Clients also get to upgrade their knowledge with the latest marketing and branding insights provided by NPQ. NPQ feels that the more savvy and better trained their clients are in mobile apps, the better marketing results they will get.

This pro-active approach has enabled NPQ to be the Number 1 mobile app developer in Singapore and Malaysia. They are able to publish more business apps in 6 months than any other app developers could in 4 years!

Mr Willy Lim, co-founder of NetProfitQuest, commented about his clients, “Our customers have this amazing ability to think up of the next most wanted mobile app feature, and we simply build it to benefit all our clients who are using the platform.”

NPQ recently launched a geo-fencing push message function. And this was actually suggested by a retail customer who wanted to send push message to his clients as a reminder to visit his store whenever they are near the vicinity!

So how do you intend to turn your customer needs towards something strategic for your business?

VALUING PEOPLE AND PARTNERS

Back in 2011, a series of spa closures such as Subtle Senses and True Spa, sparked an outcry among consumers as they were left in the lurch with unused spa packages. The spa industry has also been typically characterized as being an industry that relies on ‘hard sales tactics’ to increase sales revenue, more than in providing genuine customer satisfaction.

Joshua Lung is the founder and CEO of Healing Touch, Singapore's most recommended spa on Facebook. He started his first spa in 2001. His fifth outlet opened in September this year, at Alexandra road.

Healing Touch’s ability to stand out against the bad eggs in the industry is because they are focused on the true well being of their customers at friendly prices.

Mr Lung shared, “In a typical service industry, it is essential to have high customer retention.”

He recognizes that in order for Healing Touch to have high customer retention, his enablers are his 70 over therapists. Healing Touch adopts a flexible work arrangement because many of his therapists are married with children. This allows his therapists to focus on their household chores first before they come to work.

Rewarding them with higher commissions also helped. He was able to motivate nearly 25% of his therapists to be more conscientious in their therapy with their customers. An interesting result is that Healing Touch has a staff turnover rate of less than 10% each year. This is well below the industry's norm.

Having a low turn over rate means that Mr Lung does not have to worry about constantly retraining his people. Customers return because they recognize a familiar face servicing them, and they believe in the skills of the trained therapists.

So how much do you value your people?

VISIONARY LEADERSHIP

Since 2006, Sureclean Pte Ltd has been the leading supplier of hygiene and disinfection technology to the childcare industry in Singapore and the SEA region. Mr Alvin Tan, Managing Director of Sureclean, was recently awarded a Promising SME 500 2013 Business Luminary.

In early 2012, Mr Tan foresaw that recruiting cleaners and staff in the food and beverage industry would get increasingly difficult. He therefore secured the rights to bring in automated dishwashers to help the industry. However the timing was not right, as many restaurants could not see beyond the initial investment cost.

When the Productivity and Innovation Credit (PIC) was introduced in Singapore, he began to see a brisk increase in sales. However he risked increasing inventory space from these bulky machines. And in spite of several government incentives, sales were just not growing to his expectations.

Mr Tan decided to fully focus on his initial business driver, which was his strength in hygiene and disinfection solutions. Therefore he rolled out his Automated Disinfection System (ADS).

By leveraging on technology, his ADS helped disinfect schools, and offices without having to increase the need for manpower on his side. This automated system can be placed in the office, and controlled remotely anytime. This is effective in childcare centres and in office environment whereby his sanitization services team was previously limited by time and security.

Mr Tan commented, “I recognize the importance of developing my leaders over the long run.”

By developing his leaders with high performance leadership skills, he is confident that they would be able to run the operational aspects of the business. This allows him to focus on the strategic aspects of the business.

So how often do you review your leaders development plan, business plan and adapt to changes in the industry?