Food flavour producer leverages on IT to move ahead

Information technology is in our blood, says Samuel Chen, chief operating officer at KH Roberts Group, on the bold steps taken by the company to leverage technology.

A pioneer in the industry in South- east Asia since 1968, the company, which produces food flavours, colours and specialty ingredients that are sold mainly to food & beverage and pharmaceutical manufacturers, launched its web portal as part of an effort to increase productivity.

The system, which has different modules to handle enquiries, complaints and various resources, has been rolled out in phases since 2010.

A flavour library, which was launched recently, was designed to help sales staff better match flavours to customers' needs.

"Previously, we'd send our sales staff out with stacks of paper brochures to recommend flavours. The problem is that it is just a piece of paper and information is static. But every quarter, we have new flavours which the sales team might miss out on," says Mr Chen.

"Or, they may be approached by a customer that is unique to them. It helps that our sales team has a tool that can search all the flavours we have, and recommend the right one."

Using the system, a sales agent would not only be able to access the full list of flavours the company markets, they would also be able to sift out specific flavours based on the application a client needs the flavouring for.

Explains Mr Chen: "Food flavouring is a value-added ingredient.

There's no one-size- fits-all solution. Say for orange flavouring, we can't sell this to 10 customers because different markets have different taste profiles.

Then of course, there are the specifics of applications, e.g. biscuits versus ice cream or liquid milk."

The system will have additional modules that will further enhance the internal workflow and task management among the network of staff.

Explains Tan Pok Kiam, group business manager at KH Roberts: "In the past, if a customer wanted a flavour that is not available in the market, they would tell our sales representative, who would tell us, before we go to the technical experts - the flavourists. There is a lot of relaying of messages, and the message may get lost along the way."

KH Roberts' IT system automatically dispenses the information to the relevant parties, thus reducing the chances of error and ensuring that the information is received more expediently, says Mr Tan.

The system has also afforded the company savings in terms of headcount cost.

"A lot of sampling is required in our industry for customers to do tests and evaluation. In the past, all of this was done on paper and we'd have to hire three or four people to support the regional network. With the system, we save about four headcounts, and that's (savings of over) $100,000 per year," says Mr Chen.

That is not to say that the implementation of the system, which cost the company in excess of $200,000 (for the software alone), was a painless process.

"We worked hard to get staff to embrace (the software). It was not an overnight thing. Making sure people with no computer literacy are savvy enough to go up to a computer . . . that took us at least five years (to implement when we first introduced our enterprise resource planning software)," says Mr Chen. "The culture is here now, and people are not afraid of computers.

"The portals we've developed are nothing new . . . it's about adapting what's available out there to what we're doing."

It also helps that the company was able to leverage Spring's Capability Development Scheme to help fund the upgrade; the grant from Spring was awarded to a larger project taken on by KH Roberts to relook its business strategies, revamp its organisation structure and upgrade its IT networks in a bid to help the company further its expansion overseas.

Says Mr Chen: "A lot of other SMEs may be busy growing the business, getting more sales, or dealing with the manpower crunch. We are more focused on leveraging IT that will help us move ahead. That's what gives us the motivation to embrace technology.

"We've been expanding our business quite aggressively since 2010 and we are expecting more and more enquiries and orders moving ahead. So with this in place, we're ready to ramp up to meet demand."

Looking ahead, the company hopes to introduce improvements to the IT system, including the implementation of a sales order processing module, to allow purchase orders to be submitted and received electronically, and project management software that will allow staff to collaborate on projects without being in the same locality.

"We have headquartered our research and development here, but we have offices across the region. So this allows us to have offices overseas, and still have the software to help coordinate a particular project," says Mr Chen.

The company is also looking to automation at the manufacturing end.

Says Mr Chen: "Next on our mind will be full automation in the various aspects of our operations to further improve productivity."