Building Infrastructure to help SME : Reveries from ASIT

Picture Credit: http://www.asit.org.tw/

From the visit to Association of Service Industry, Taiwan (ASIT), I glimpsed how government can cultivate Small and Medium Entreprise (SME) by making infrastructure accessible and affordable.

ASIT is a government organization which aims to cultivate SME in Taiwan. It creates synergy between SME and the government.


Two projects were presented by associates from ASIT that day.
The first forecast that contract and project-based hiring will become the mainstream in 5 years.
The second illustrated Taipei’s engagement of SME to develop cloud based IT business solutions.


External Hiring and Engaging Consultants: Enhancing the platform
The first project highlighted the gap between the current labour market and business needs. Skills like experience in restructuring, Brand building, and Business model change are scarce. Time-based projects like setting up IT infrastructure and marketing plans may require people with specific skills that are relevant to the company only for a period. The speaker used these examples to highlight the benefits of engaging external partners and consultants.

Having the opportunity to work with consultants, I take a cautious stance despite fully agreeing with the speaker’s analysis. His presentation reminds me of the setbacks Singapore’s Productivity and Innovation Credit faced when dealing with consultants. (Learn more about PIC here: http://www.iras.gov.sg/irashome/picredit.aspx). The range of services provided by different consultant companies is varied. The consultants engaged can come with a myriad of experience. Looking through their profiles is like wandering into an apothecary and seeing labels on jars that simply make no sense. How can we ensure that we are hiring the right guy? From personal experience, a mismatch will not only fail to deliver the desired results, but also gravely frustrate business owners. A little humour:

Picture Credit: http://www.despair.com/consulting.html

Enhancing the platform to match businesses to consultants may help.
Taking inspiration from TED, a video sharing platform for ideas, it may be beneficial to construct a similar platform for consultants to demonstrate their capabilities through short video lectures targeted at business managers. Some topics of interest may be: 10 types of must-have automation for F&B, How to deal with negativity during restructuring, ERP, SAP, Oracle: Which should I choose... And the list can be infinite.

Learn more about TED here: http://www.ted.com/.

This platform will not only remind SME of the possibilities in the market, but also allow us to learn about the specialization and capabilities of consultants and how the business can benefit from these services. The consultants will also gain a stage to attract customers by appealing to pain points.

Cloud Technology: Affordability, Communication and Competitiveness
The second presentation offered affordable ways for SME to improve their business through technology. Leveraging on the emergent of cloud technology, Taiwan government wants to match business needs to IT solutions developers and provide a platform for the transaction. Having experienced difficulties in customising and upgrading our HR and POS system, I am excited by the opportunities available through this project.

Pain points I have seen, with my limited understanding, are:
1. Justifying the high initial investment and licensing fees when the current system are managable.
2. Limited developed products in the market, or the lack of faith in new products, especially when the investment and cost of change is high.
3. Adapting the business needs to the products with little customization. Sometime, more data-entry jobs may be created from automation.
4. High barrier to changing systems.

As Mr Chang (Farmosa Chang) repeatedly emphasized, setting up the infrastructure is the basis for expansion. A cloud base portal, with its promise of lowering cost, facilitating communications between users and developer and establishing a marketplace for free competition may just be the solution.