Developing software for global market.

By YVONNE CHONG
Tuesday, December 03, 2002 (The Star)

SOFTWARE Online Sdn Bhd, a home-grown software house that has successfully marketed its solutions overseas, has this piece of advice for local software companies: develop software with the global market in mind.

Its president Leong Nyu Kuan said as the whole world had now become one large market, “whatever you make, make sure it has global perspective.”

The company, which markets its products under the brandname of IFCA (Information for Competitive Advantage) and prefers to be referred to as the IFCA group, experienced triple digit growth in its overseas market last year.

Based on the rate at which overseas deals were coming through, it expects the growth trend to continue.

Tan Chen Meng (left) and Leong Nyu Kuan look at the global perspective

The overseas market contributed 20% to the group’s total revenue last year and “we expect the percentage to grow to 40% this year and at least 50%, if not 60%, next year,” Leong told Star Business in an interview

“We’re making it happen because of the high R&D investments we’ve made. We’re pushing the overseas market aggressively to leverage on it. 

“We’ve done the groundwork to break into many markets (since 1999) and we believe the gestation period is nearly over.

“The gestation period was longer than we expected mainly because there was no case study for our prospective clients in their countries,” he added. 

IFCA has successfully implemented its solutions in resorts in Maldives and Britain and is currently implementing solutions in Namibia, Botswana and Australia.

IFCA prides itself in having a range of products that were industry-focused, not generic solutions that were customised to the needs of the industry, and that, said Leong, was a key factor to its growth.  

The group focuses on industries involved in property management, construction and engineering, hotel and clubs, financing and leasing. 

Leong said the key success to IFCA’s solutions was “integration”.  

He said many organisations were incredulous when they first saw the end-to-end integration offered by IFCA software.

Nonetheless, its software comes in modules so clients can pick and choose the solution according to their budget, and scale up as and when more solutions were needed, he added. 

Tan Chen Meng, vice-president of IFCA Software Ltd, a Software Online subsidiary focused on the development of the group’s overseas market, said when the group first started to market overseas in 1999, it was not sure how to position its products against other IT products. 

“But the huge success we had in South Africa and Maldives really boosted our confidence.  

“We know we have the right products to penetrate the international market.  

“We are now proud to walk into any country and show that we, a Malaysian IT company, can do it,” he added. 

Tan said Malaysia was not a stranger to many developing countries.  

Many African countries, for example, respected the country as being in the high-end of the developing nations and one to learn from, he said. 

Tracing its progress in marketing overseas, Tan said almost all IFCA’s overseas deals were won after the interested parties came for site visits, partly due to scepticism over the quality of software products coming from a small developing nation like Malaysia. 

He recalled an incident where an Australian resort hired a famous personality in the Australian hospitality industry to evaluate IFCA software by observing the live application of the software in resorts in Singapore and Malaysia which used the solutions.  

The consultant arrived two days before he was scheduled to “dig up the dirt” but IFCA solutions ultimately proved their worth and the company won the contract against five other vendors, Tan said. 

IFCA believes it has to “get heavily into the first implementation in a new market because it will serve as a key reference site in that country,” Leong said. 

As IFCA had experienced, once there was a successful implementation a given country, marketing in that country as well as its neighbouring countries would be so much easier. 

For example, news of its deal in South Africa – where the implementation of its main project is underway and two new projects are in the pipeline – has sparked interest in Botswana, Namibia and Nigeria. 

“Once we do a good job, word of mouth advertising takes place,” Leong said. 

The world is its marketplace but IFCA is more interested in marketing its products to developing nations, citing better market opportunities. 

“To put it simply, developing countries are still developing. For example, compared to developed countries, they are more actively building new houses, hotels and clubs,” Tan said. 

“Even if the big boys are in, we’re happy because then we can peg our solutions at just slightly below their price”. 

One of IFCA’s main target markets is China, where it is confident of making big waves.  

Where it works mainly through partners in Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines, United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Taiwan, Australia and Maldives, it decided to open its own branches in China to tap the vast market there. 

It recently set up a branch in Shanghai, and has plans to set up a branch in Beijing by the second quarter next year, and another in Guangzhou by the end of next year or early 2004. 

It has also appointed two local Chinese partners and has plans to appoint more “because the Chinese market is just huge and every province is just like another country,” Leong said. 

He said the company was currently in talks with about 10 companies involved in property and property management, including multinational companies and large local conglomerates. 

It expects to sign its first deal in China in the first quarter of next year. 

IFCA aims to get a slice of the action in the new 200-300 hotels expected to be completed in Beijing before China hosts the Olympic Games in 2008, Tan added. 

Leong said IFCA was previously wary of entering the Chinese market for fear of violation to its intellectual property rights but now that China had been admitted into WTO (World Trade Organisation), proper controls were in place. 

Since its inception in 1987, IFCA has been very committed to R&D because it recognises continuous R&D as a key factor to the birth of innovative products and maintaining competitiveness. 

“An IT company not committed to R&D will go obsolete very fast,” Leong said. 

The company channels back 20%-25% of its revenue back to R&D and has more than 100 R&D staff in three centres, two located in Malaysia and the other in the Philippines.

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