Firework in KLCC 2010
Happy New Year 2010.
The year 2010 has come with high hope and anticipation from the people all around the world. They usher the year with cheers and fireworks and looking forward for a better year ahead.
Year 2009 has passed and as I looked back to the last year and ask myself what have I done for myself and the company. Did I do enough? Or have I been wasting time unnecessarily. The answer I think was the year 2009 was a tough year and even though we have achieved many things in sales and projects but I didn’t do enough.
We have done a numbers of good light and sound projects like Ummo building in Pekan, DCA new building in Sepang, UPM new building in Serdang, UiTM Shah Alam and many smaller and preferred installation around Selangor and Kuala Lumpur and Malaysia is general. We set up a showroom for light and sound in Puchong, upgrade a few sales marketing and the website and secured a few projects for 2010.
Looking back the efforts that we put in just to achieve these result is too much. We have to spend many resources and it does not justify the outcome and we still have inefficient working method where we spend many hours just to get one task done. Spend more than 10 man hours just to get a simple sales proposal done is no good. Some time our technical team have to go to the site a few times just to solve a few problem. The reason given was not enough information given, parts is not enough and need to come to buy, contractor pull the wrong cable or worst still waiting for other people to come.
Of course some factor is due to external environment and we have no control in it. The efficient level of the local contractor is still on the average as there is no qualify people to do a certain job. The consultant and the project manager some time play a pushing game and we as the contractor have to undertake most of the blames in order to get moving.
Competition is still very stiff in the light and sound contracting work. Other supplier is trying to undercut or to bypass us by quoting directly to the client. We specify their product in and we hope with this effort we have the chance of winning the project. But these supplier quote directly to the client in order to earn higher profit.
Another external factor where we feel is not right is the contractor did not pay us promptly when work has been completed and done. The common answer is that they have not received payment from the owner and they expect us to wait. Even though they receive the payment but they delay paying us.
If we follow the same method of working attitude and business method for this year then they will definitely see the same result as last year and there will no improvement. I must do things differently this year in order to see a better result at the end of 2010.
This is what I will do for year 2010.
1) To spend less hour in getting work done by improving the system around the office.
2) To train more in house technician and technical team so that they can do faster installation and solve problem easily. This can only be done by sending them to more product training.
3) Get more main products ourselves by becoming the distributor rather than just another product dealer. This means increase our in house marketing and sales. We don’t want to rely so much on the third party product.
4) Organized and update the sales and marketing catalogue/material in the server and get more drawing updated for quick proposal.
5) Invest on the presentation software like the 3-D visualization. Your client will be impress with the presentation.
6) On the personal matter I will spend less hours working especially in front of my computer and spend more time to myself and with family and friends. Will I achieve it? Let us see.
7) Lastly, I will blog more.
That’s it. This will be my New Year resolution and do the things differently in this more challenging year 2010. What about you? Have you done enough last year and what about this year?
By Michael Liew
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