Customer Story
Shipping Machinery firm Seiho overhauled communication, turning up speed to make new waves
Seiho's commitment to create an open culture and digitalised operations, led by its astute and youthful director, helps it to develop a new competitive edge.
1982 was the year Singapore emerged as the world's busiest port in terms of tonnage. In that same year, Seiho Machinery & Electric was founded. Over the next 30 years, companies like Seiho developed the workforce, operational, and engineering capabilities that drove Singapore's competitiveness in the international maritime industry as well as its continued strategic significance globally.
For 30-year-old James Kuah, leading his family-owned marine and shipping firm during this critical stage of industry transformation requires an ability to both harness three decades of experience and to translate the expertise into digital knowledge accessible across the company. This, in turn, would lead to the development of operations that can effectively address an increasingly globalised customer base.
Underpinning this transformation, Kuah believes that the winning formula for Seiho lies in its focus on developing an open culture of communication that encourages transfer of knowledge and facilitates technology adoption among the veterans and new talents.
Digitalisation drives readiness to serve
Headed by its savvy young director Kuah, Seiho Machinery & Electric is a 34-year old enterprise in pursuit of change and improvement with the times. A promising upstart in a field dominated by experienced individuals, Kuah spoke about the advantages of being young and ambitious: "You have more energy and you're more driven. You can, through your own plans and thinking, create and drive your own destiny."
Since being involved in the business five years ago, Kuah observed the need to implement changes to the manual nature of its operations to reduce errors and improve responses to customers.
"One major problem I faced when I took over was that things were done manually. We were still using Excel for stock-taking. There were a lot of errors and I knew I had to change things," he revealed, adding that it took over a year to convince his parents to agree to computerise Seiho's operations.
The decision to switch from email systems and office applications hosted on their own servers to the cloud-based Microsoft Office 365 solution arose while Kuah was overseas visiting a major ship management company. At that time, a piece of critical information that a customer requested had been inaccessible to him as his employees were not in the office to retrieve the data.
He began by implementing Singtel's Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solution Microsoft Office 365 a year ago, consolidating the company's data on the cloud-based application, allowing employees constant access to their emails and documents from any location in the world.
"If you don't have the information at a particular point, it creates a very bad impression in our field. If customers can't trust you to give them the information they want, how can they trust you to do their engine repairs? You can't say that you do not know; you need to have solutions available at all times."
Seiho has also reaped other business-related gains in the form of productivity and cost-efficiency. As Kuah enthused, "With Microsoft Office 365, we don't have to worry about connectivity and accessibility. Before, we always had to get into the company early to read emails. If we were out, we had to contact someone in the office to send the information over. But now, we can work from any place in the world."
"Not having to maintain our own server has also helped us reduce costs significantly. We have a cloud solution that is reliable and accessible, and we don't need technical personnel to help us solve problems with our servers. Now that we have Singtel, they can determine whether it's due to Internet connectivity or an internal server issue. It's a one-stop solution!"
Communication is the key to business continuity and diversity
Indeed, to Kuah, staying connected is a key component of business management. A firm believer in human interaction in an increasingly digitised world, he relishes the opportunity to meet different people and communicate with industry players from around the world.
"I like to talk to people from diverse backgrounds and ages and learn from them. Older people share very interesting stories about the industry and the past that we can employ today. Shipping is a very global and diversified industry," he expressed.
"In our industry, there are a lot of value chains. We have to get in touch with important parties from these value chains in order to understand where the technology is moving, what the customers think, and how the industry is moving forward."
"If you're just managing people and not a good communicator, that's a big problem."
By developing a good open culture for communication and enabling the organisation with effective channels and tools, an exchange of knowledge and ideas can easily be facilitated, enhancing business continuity and diversity.
Data-driven growth strategy
While continuously driving greater productivity and delivering better customer experience, Kuah remains keenly aware of current changes happening in the industry.
"I believe that the marine industry in Singapore is consolidating and will boil down to only a few major players. Those that do not adopt new technology will be driven by market forces to either sell or close down," he remarked.
Kuah is currently working on implementing a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system for Seiho to obtain detailed analyses on customers' profile, data reports, and performance measurements. With insight from more in-depth data on operations, he hopes to channel critical resources into driving key performance, while diverting the underutilised resources into other investments.
With a keen eye on the core business, an active digitalisation of its operations, and data-driven sensing of the horizon, the energetic Kuah is determined to transform Seiho to stay competitive.
"There will always be problems and you have to think of ways to solve them, using technology or otherwise. Business management is the same everywhere!"
A piece of Do Different advice from Kuah
"We can't stop or control market forces. The only way to be more relevant is to be-efficient and productive. We need to adopt technology to restructure the core business."
– Mr Kuah, 30.