Creating a tech culture

MANY traditionally offline companies talk about moving towards a digital economy, but few have managed to do so successfully.

Founded in 1963, mainboard-listed marine products firm BH Global is beating the odds by transforming its culture to become a technology-focused one, says its chief information officer Ken Soh.

"The reality of today's business landscape is increasingly challenging and data-driven. To remain agile and competitive, there was a real need for us to embrace technology in a way that drives productivity as well as profitability for the company," he explains.

The strategic role of IT and technology is not just lip service at BH Global - it is even stated on the board agenda, with the intent to turn it into a profit centre for the organisation.

"BH Global is unique because we are the only true provider of the full, end-to-end range of electrical solutions and services critical to the marine and offshore, and oil and gas industries," says Mr Soh.

Therefore, the company needs to constantly innovate and develop solutions that are relevant to the evolving needs of customers.

"This is one of the key reasons why we've introduced e-commerce and are embracing innovative technologies such as guided data analytics in the company," he says.

Mr Soh adds that most importantly, technology is seen as a critical enabler to help them identify new sales opportunities and increase customer satisfaction.

He was quick to add that it was not "just any technology", but about finding the right software and platforms that best suited their needs.

"It was critical to introduce technology that is user-friendly and intuitive, and allows us to demonstrate a quick return of investment to management. If a platform is too difficult to use, people will simply not use it," he explains.

Mr Soh points out that Qlik data discovery solutions was one that fit the bill as it could be easily and quickly rolled out and adopted by their business users, especially their management executives.

Reaping benefits

Using such platforms allowed the company to achieve full transparency of their sales performance and finance data and conduct more powerful and complex analyses, he says.

"This has helped us reduce reporting time and operating costs, identify gaps and opportunities, and drive sales revenue by making faster and better decisions," Mr Soh explains.

In the past, the company had to wait up to three days each time they wish to generate new data reports. By the time the reports come through, the firm is faced with a new set of business priorities that needs to be addressed. This led to a vicious cycle.

"Today, we have been able to achieve significantly reduced time and resources for data reporting and analysis. Backlog has been reduced by close to 70 per cent," he says.

As part of the firm's e-commerce strategy, BH Global launched a new e-store towards the end of 2014 to provide channel partners and customers with a one-stop customer engagement portal in which product information is categorically presented with user-friendly search and compare functions. "As we continue to strengthen our e-commerce offering, we'll also look to analyse the data from our e-store transactions and customer behaviour and refine our service further," he adds.

One of BH Global's biggest achievements was to implement the new analytics solution in just three months. "This is one of the fastest technology and digital rollouts I have driven, especially when it comes to an enterprise-level and scalable solution like Qlik," says Mr Soh.

Such a milestone could not have been possible without the commitment and buy-in from management, he adds.

"The (digital) transformation is greatly supported by the management and it has really helped drive the culture and mindset shift across the enterprise," he says.

Alongside a digital culture, technology awareness is the key to moving towards a digital economy, observes Mr Soh.

"Years back, in my former workplace, the same visual analytics dashboard was eagerly suggested and test-bedded by the IT department. However, back then, the general awareness of such technology was weak and therefore enterprise-wide deployment did not realise," he explains.

It was only when "Big Data" became a buzzword that such an initiative managed to gain traction and take off.

One possible barrier that stops companies from adopting new technologies and innovations is the fear of incurring costs.

However, Mr Soh said from his experience that there is "tremendous support" by the government to cope with costs.

The Productivity and Innovation Credit scheme is one such resource that companies can tap, he points out. One inevitable challenge that BH Global had to face in its quest to go digital was cyber security.

With the rapid adoption of information and communications technology in businesses, coupled with the advent and sophistication of advanced threats, mainstream security measures are no longer adequate, says Mr Soh.

Seeking solutions

To overcome this, the company sourced and represented several new wave cyber security products under a new subsidiary company called Athena Dynamics. "We test-deployed them in-house and subsequent to that, we selected the best and introduced them to the Singapore and Asia-Pacific markets," he says.

The transformation into a digital economy is an ongoing one, as BH Global continues to keep up with the technology curve.

Some future plans would be to scale their Qlik data analytics platform further across the enterprise, integrating it with their new enterprise resource planning systems, and deploying it on mobile devices for their business users to boost agility and flexibility.

BH Global's IT department is also nurturing its subsidiary Athena Dynamics, which focuses on the distribution of technology products to their partners and customers. These products aim to counter the ever-increasing complexity of advanced threats in the cyber space.

"In terms of our organisational goals, we will continue to identify and leverage new opportunities to grow and expand their business presence. The e-store will be a key focus for the company going forward," he says.