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Success
Stories
By Michael Alan Hamlin
February 2, 2004
Last week the peso hit a new low,
presidential aspirant Fernando Poe Jr. finally revealed he has a
temper when asked if the plunge was tied to his candidacy, and local
businesspersons began to fret openly about the impact of a Poe
presidency on the economy and the perception of international
investors. But as I've suggested in the past few weeks, none of that
matters much to a broad spectrum of companies in traditional and
non-traditional sectors that remain enthusiastic about doing
business here.
A good non-traditional example is Global
Infrastructure Holdings (GIH), a unit of the now combined
India-based Ispat/LNM Group, the second largest steel company in the
world. It has offices in 45 countries and 120,000 employees. GIH
acquired control of National Steel Corporation late last year, and
will formally inaugurate the company's rehabilitated plant in Iligan
City tomorrow. According to Iligan City major Franklin M. Quijano,
somewhere around 3,000 ecstatic citizens will be on hand to watch
President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo push the "start button" and get
the city's largest taxpayer back on line.
GiveMe Unlimited
(GiveMe), a local enterprise and wireless solutions provider, is a
good non-traditional - and SME-sized - example of a fast-growing,
enthusiastic-about-the-future firm. The company recently reported a
whopping 1,000 percent growth in revenues and customer base, the
result, according to a top executive, of its participation in the
2003 e-Services Philippines exhibition. The company grew its
clientele from 10 to over 100, forged reseller alliances with both
small and big-name industry players, and expanded its network of
contacts from less than 200 to over 3,000.
The annual
e-Services Philippines exhibition, as you know, is the Philippines'
premiere e-Services outsourcing show. The exhibit, organized
annually by the Center for International Trade Expositions and
Missions (CITEM), showcases the expertise of local and multinational
companies providing services to the contact center, medical
transcription, software development, business process outsourcing
(BPO), shared financial, and animation sectors.
Established
in 2001 with less than 20 employees, GiveMe's growth over the past
year was an impressive and unprecedented achievement, according to
Erick Kalugdan, president and chief software developer of the
company. As a new player, GiveMe was expecting slow if deliberate
growth in 2003 due to those famously weak economic conditions,
intense competition among mobile application developers, and limited
resources for costly advertising campaigns.
Kalugdan
explained to me that the company was fortunate to join last year's
exposition and take advantage of the exposure and publicity it
provided to exhibitors. The company sold 40 licenses for its
wireless solution "InfoTXT Messaging" - with a value of
approximately P2.4 million - in the six months following the
exhibit. Sales were primarily driven by the instant popularity and
media publicity InfoTXT gained when it was named recipient of the
e-Services Best Product Award for Wireless Applications for 2003,
according to Kalugdan.
"In less than a year, we closed over
40 contracts on our own, excluding those generated by our growing
network of resellers. This rapidly and dramatically increased our
revenues and our user network now extends to the hospitality, power
and utilities, shipping, manufacturing, and airline industries, as
well as the public sector," he said.
Among GiveMe's big-name
clients are Caltex Philippines, Shangri-La Hotel Makati, Hotel
Intercontinetal Manila, Manulife, Permanent Plans, Forex Cargo,
Maersk Philippines, and the National Power Corporation. All use
InfoTXT for sales, distribution, and customer service processes,
according to Kalugdan.
InfoTXT specializes in the
"convergence" of SMS (short messaging system) mobile telephony with
desktop computing. It allows companies to send and receive text
messages using PCs and facilitates retrieval of information through
SMS. "The software can be interfaced with any enterprise system. It
can be used to respond to customer inquiries, announce product
offerings and events, update customers or employees with new
information, communicate alerts, track shipments, and broadcast job
openings, power interruptions, company procedures, and any other
information employees and clients will benefit from," Kalugdan
said.
"e-Services was instrumental to the growth of our
company and the success and popularity of our InfoTXT software. Its
rewards were simply unrestricted - it offered us the right venue to
communicate with direct buyers, discuss issues with different trade
delegations and groups, and network with potential resellers and
service partners. It helped us to facilitate business transactions,
and effectively promote our products at a fraction of the cost of
media advertisements. We couldn't have got this far this fast on our
own," Kalugdan explained.
The 2004 e-Services exhibit will
take place February 12-13 at the EDSA Shangri-La Hotel, Manila.
Participants can tour over 100 product and services displays, and
attend special conference sessions on the current state of the
e-Services sectors, emerging trends, and forecasts. e-Services will
also feature awards for best exhibitors and products and a short
animated film competition for students and amateur
animators.
So get your mind off all the reasons some
businesses are paralyzed with worry, and see some of the companies
that are determined to succeed no matter what at e-Services
Philippines.
(Michael Alan Hamlin is the managing
director of consultancy TeamAsia and the author of three books on
Asian economies and companies. His latest book is Marketing Asian
Places, of which he is a co-author (Wiley, 2001), and he is
currently at work on High Visibility: The Making and Marketing of
Asian Professionals into Celebrities. Write him at
mahamlin@teamasia.com.).
Copyright © 2003 Michael Alan Hamlin.
All Rights Reserved.
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