By Timothy Seow

WHEN Kaden Choa, fresh out of university, started working full-time for his father at Excel Hardware - a wholesale distributor of furniture parts - in 2007, he decided to try and modernise some of his company's processes.

'My dad, as the first generation, shaped the business in a more traditional way. We presented ourselves to customers as a very traditional Chinese company,' said Mr Choa, now the operations manager.

The younger Mr Choa, 24, studied commerce (with a major in marketing) at Curtin University's Singapore campus. 'As the second generation, I wanted to change the whole look and feel of the company,' he said.

'I had many ideas: marketing, branding, advertising, franchising, going to retail, even going towards B2C (business to consumer).'

However, Mr Choa had difficulty communicating his ideas. 'For example, most (traditional) Chinese businessmen do not believe in advertising. Not all, but most. They also do not believe in marketing. Western companies would normally invest in R&D and marketing, but not the traditional Chinese companies,' he said.

'I was being stopped. Maybe because I looked too inexperienced to my dad - this I could understand - but also because I could not express what I wanted to do.'

Staying competitive

This is where Spring Singapore's SME Management Action for Results (SMART) business excellence consultant came into the picture.

'The consultant from SMART was able to serve as a bridge for communication. He explained many things and showed us a lot of case studies. He explained to my dad too, so he understood the importance of advertising.'

Spring's SMART initiative was launched in 2006 to encourage small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to improve their management capabilities and help their journey towards business excellence.

'It gives them a globally benchmarked framework against which they can compare their company with, and see what it is they need to look at in terms of becoming more competitive and improving their business,' said Radha Yogendran, the principal assessor of business excellence at Spring.

'Not all SMEs have this culture of review and improvement. SMART helps SMEs strengthen their management systems and processes and become stronger companies,' she added.

A big plus for Mr Choa was that the consultant sent by SMART was fluent in Mandarin. 'They sent down someone Mandarin-speaking, so he could communicate with my dad,' Mr Choa said.

And it was also his father, Kevin Choa - co-founder of Excel Hardware in 1998 - who first came across some of Spring's initiatives in the newspaper and then tasked his son to find out more.

According to Mr Choa, the consultant, who worked with the company between December 2008 and February 2009, did a lot more than simply bridge the generational gap. He also helped Mr Choa prioritise the many ideas brimming in his head.

'I was very eager to do two things: one, marketing and branding in Singapore, and second, internationalisation, either franchising or having more agents overseas.'

'But the consultant told me that you can't do two things at a time - if locally you were not strong enough, how would you be able to fight overseas? So I didn't venture overseas.'

However, Excel did decide to go into advertising and marketing. Since then, Excel has advertised in interior design and architecture magazines, and even sponsored furniture on the set of a Suria programme.

According to Kaden, magazine advertisements cost him 'quite a lot per year'.

'Three magazines per month is about $8,000. So that's around $96,000 a year. That is a lot for an SME,' he added.

Mr Choa also said that the 'most important' thing that SMART did was to help teach them to formalise and document their ideas.

'As SMEs, many with traditional Chinese bosses, we have many ideas, but it is very hard for us to pen them down in black and white,' Mr Choa explained.

'SMART forced me to write things down, which is a positive thing, because many things that they say in presentations - the business excellence framework for example - we were already doing, but didn't know we were on the right path.'

One area that the consultant 'forced' Mr Choa to document was the company's milestones. 'One very good thing he made me do was (chart) the company's milestones. I didn't even remember, but he forced me to find out. I had to dig out from my dad, from everybody,' Mr Choa said.

Staff matters

Another SME, interior design company Weiken.com, said that, in particular, SMART taught them how to better manage their staff. 'They let us know where our blind spots were,'said Vincent Neo, Weiken.com's director.

'SMART gave a lot of advice on how to grow your business, how to have a focus point, how to take care of your staff, how to train your staff,' said Mr Neo.

'The main focus they recommended was for us to take care of the sales staff. It is people that give us money - if you don't have salesmen you cannot survive.'

Mr Neo said the programme cost $3,000, with Weiken.com paying 30 per cent, equivalent to $900. SMART, which worked with Weiken.com during the third quarter of 2009, also recommended embarking on ISO certification as well as establishing a brand management system.

Weiken.com is currently considering implementing these suggestions. 'To maintain the ISO system in the long term, the cost is very high. And you must let your salesmen get used to this ISO standard. For this you also need time,' explained Mr Neo.

However, he sees the importance of ISO certification. 'If the company wants to grow further ahead, we must go for ISO. Actually ISO is not hard, but can we implement the system?' he added.

That being said, both men strongly recommend SMART to other SMEs. 'I hope that this programme will get publicised, then even more SMEs can benefit from SMART,' Mr Choa said.