Supreme Components grows global business with 'Speed of Thought'

Singapore

A record seven Enterprise 50 Awards is a noteworthy achievement for the once-struggling Supreme Components International Pte Ltd (SCI).

The company, a franchised distributor of electronic and LED components, has charted a quick rise in annual turnover. When it was acquired in 2005, annual turnover was S$495,000. The company is now a multi-million dollar, global franchised distributor of these products, and has 12 offices in 10 countries across Asia, North America and Australia. In 2019, its revenue was S$25 million.

But SCI has set its sights even higher, and aims to hit the S$100 million mark.

The achievements of SCI today are inseparable from Vick Aggarwala, the company's president and chief executive who has been in the electronic components industry since 1975, when he was just starting out his career as an engineer at the age of 22.

After the company's acquisition, he tapped his experience in electronic components and his extensive network to turn SCI around and build it to what it is today.

His son Piyush, the director of SCI's LED Lighting (Asia-Pacific), coined SCI's key value - "Speed of Thought" - seven years ago, during a father-son lunch-time discussion on what differentiated SCI from its competitors.

They agreed that the essential difference was speed - speed in delivering greater value to its customers.

The senior Aggarwala said: "What differentiates SCI from our competitors is our ability to serve customers at the 'Speed of Thought'. SCI's employees are quick and agile and seek to provide exemplary service to our customers.

"I always tell our staff, deliver 80 per cent of the solution 20 per cent of the time to get 100 per cent response rate from the customers."

SCI does this by supplying its customers with available information as soon as possible while working to provide the remaining information later.

The company provides its staff with the right resources, such as up-to-date cost information, so they can furnish timely quotes to customers.

When the customers are moving faster than its suppliers, the company plays the role of bringing suppliers to speed by urging them to provide timely information.

Furthermore, SCI has a system that ensures that orders placed are processed the same day.

As employees play a vital role in the delivery of service at the "Speed of Thought", the company ensures that this value is instilled in every employee from their first day of work.

The company president himself personally conducts induction training for new employees and reminds them of the key values during daily meetings.

In recruitment, the company looks for individuals who are self-driven, open-minded and willing to go the extra mile.

As technology is an enabler, SCI is implementing a wide range of technological solutions which have improved its operational efficiency and productivity.

By shifting its operations from a decentralised file system to a cloud-based Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system, the company can leverage the customer-relationship management software to tackle inefficiencies. The adoption of the ERP system has boosted SCI's overall productivity of its pre-sales and quotation process by 15 per cent.

In addition, the company has an in-house IT department which enhances existing software features and develops new solutions to better serve its customers and employees.

Responding to employees' feedback, the company developed an in-house quotation tool for its sales employees. Introduced recently, it enables its finance team to check and retrieve quotations issued by its sales team.

The elder Aggarwala has ambitions for SCI to become one of the top 50 distributors of electronic components in the world. He aims to achieve this by reaching out to more customers, expanding its range of distributed products by connecting with more manufacturers and hiring talented staff who are able to bring the company forward.

Having shifted its strategy from solely distributing electronic components, SCI is now placing greater focus on the growing LED lighting segment.

New markets and opportunities have also opened for the company, with the proliferation of electronic gadgets and Internet of Things (IoT) devices, and the increasing popularity of electric vehicles.

SCI has since signed franchise agreements with notable component manufacturers such as Honeywell (USA), LEM (Switzerland) and Smartec (Netherlands); their portfolios comprise electrical components used in artificial intelligence (AI) and IoT-enabled products and solutions.

SCI also has plans to further its operations, expanding beyond its current markets in Australia, India, Japan, North America and South-east Asia, to China and Germany soon.

Also on the cards is an e-commerce platform that will digitalise its sales processes. Mr Piyush Aggarwala said: "It would "enable customers to find us online, buy parts online and start shipping things automatically without having too much human intervention."