Concerted effort aimed at ‘e-enabling’ SMIs
Charles F. Moreira
The Star: InTech-22/10/01
To help SMIs get online, Cordoda Corporation (www.cordoda.com) offers its “SmiLE” package, comprising desktop or notebook PCs, printers and scanners, plus a host of e-commerce software, services and facilities.
PETALING JAYA: The SMI Association of Malaysia and a slew of solutions providers are working hard to convince Malaysian small and medium industries (SMIs) to adopt e-commerce to extend their reach into the global market.
The parties are organising a roadshow on e-commerce, while the companies will be pitching their wares at SMIs, as well as small and medium enterprises (SMEs).(In Malaysia, SMIs are defined as manufacturers, while SMEs can be involved in other business activities).
According to the Gartner Group, global business-to-business (B2B) Internet sales amounted to US$443bil (RM1.65 trillion) in 2000.
It predicted that Internet sales will grow to US$8.5 trillion (RM32.3 trillion) by 2005 despite the expected global economic downturn.
“Thus local SMIs must be fully utilise e-commerce to enable them to not only trade locally, but also internationally over the Internet,” said SMI Association of Malaysia president Looi Teong Chye.
However, he acknowledged that SMIs faced some real problems in adopting e-commerce, like high cost of hardware and software, an unreliable communications infrastructure, and a reluctance among local banks to finance SMIs’ technology needs because of the fear of not being able to re-possess the assets.
The roadshow, the second in a series, will kick off in the Klang Valley in November. There will be both English and Mandarin versions of the so-called “SMI eCommerce II Roadshow 2001.”
It will be held outside the Klang Valley in the second quarter of next year.
The roadshow is jointly organised by the SMI Association, its company SMISME Dot Com Sdn Bhd -- which runs its website www.smisme.com -- and e-commerce portal operator and brick-and-mortar trading company Ceylinco Consolidated (M) Sdn Bhd.
The sponsors are Cordoda Corporation Sdn Bhd, Hitachi Asia (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd and KarenSoft Solutions Sdn Bhd.
Helping hand
To help SMIs get online, Cordoda Corporation (www.cordoda.com) offers its “SmiLE” package, comprising desktop or notebook PCs, printers and scanners, plus a host of e-commerce software, services and facilities.
Its standard business package includes providing a client an e-commerce enabled website, Internet access installation and setup, 20 web-based e-mail accounts, webhosting, customer domain name registration, a five-page website, customer live chatting facilities on the website, an online sales catalogue, a payment gateway, and registration of the website with major search engines.
Cordoda will also provide clients with Voice over IP (VoIP) accounts and prepaid VoIP cards, which will help reduce the cost of their international calls by 80%, the company claimed.
“We will also register them with important trade websites, including those of the Malaysian External Trade Development Corporation (Matrade) and the Small to Medium Industries Development Corporation (Smidec),” said head of Cordoda’s SMI solutions unit, Yeoh Tze Pin.
“We will also provide them with links to online trading exchanges and lists of important websites featuring export laws, policies and regulations on key export destinations,” she added.
The basic package costs between RM3,000 to RM10,000, depending on features and including three hours of training in Internet skills.
“We’re announcing SMiLE now, and expect to have 300 customers in the next 12 months,” said Cordoda chief executive officer Shane J. Hodge.
Meanwhile, KarenSoft Solutions (www.karensoft.com) has been working with the SMI Association for three years and offers SMIs its locally developed enterprise resource planning solutions, covering sales and distribution, materials requirement planning, logistics management, planning and production.
Its other applications include fixed asset management, customer relationship management and human resources information.
“We provide consultancy services, and will customise the applications to suit their needs and unique business processes and integrate our software with their existing systems,” said KarenSoft chief marketing officer Vincent Goh.
“We will also help them solve whatever systems integration problems they may have and provide them with training and retraining services,” he added.
KarenSoft’s package typically cost between RM40,000 to RM150,000, depending on modules and services.
ASP option
The company also offers subscriptions to its applications via an application services provider (ASP) model, for between RM750 to RM3,000 per person per month, depending on the modules selected.
“Our ASP model can even work over dialup lines at 28.8 Kbps. To get around the problem of dropped lines or connections, our apps allow users to key in data offline, then dial in to synchronise the new data with the host server,” said Goh.
Another ASP option is offered by Hitachi Asia (www.hitachiasp.com), which began to work with the SMI Association in May.
Its applications are accessible through a web browser interface from a client PC, and cover financial, distribution, manufacturing and human resource management.
According to the company’s deputy general manager, Cedrick Tay, Hitachi Asia offers “pure ASP” services, with up to nine users who access the applications hosted at Hitachi’s premises over dialup or leased lines, and with monthly subscription rates per user ranging from RM250 to RM800.
Its “pure ASP” solutions include a “rollback facility” that gets clients back to their most recent transaction should their dialup line drop.
“We also provide them with consulting services over a 36-month period for between RM10,000 to RM45,000,” said Tay. Options are available for 12-month and 24-month periods.
“For customers with 10 or more users, we offer them our corporate ASP package, which provides them with a server to host the applications at their premises; this helps them avoid the problem of line drops,” said Tay.
Its corporate ASP subscription rates range from RM600 to RM1,300 per user per month.
Hitachi Asia currently has 40 customers in Singapore and one customer in Malaysia; the latter is medium-sized manufacturer with 70 users that it declined to name.
The company has targeted to sign up 20 local SMIs within the next 12 months.
Extended reach
Meanwhile, Ceylinco Consolidated signed a cooperative agreement with the SMI Association and SMISME Dot Com last month, under which it will provide local SMI customers with 11 webpages to promote their products on its portal at www.eceylinco.com, for a fee of RM250 per year.
The local Ceylinco unit, which has Multimedia Super Corridor (MSC) status, is a subsidiary of the 60-year-old Ceylinco Consolidated Ltd from Sri Lanka, which has offices in almost 20 countries.
“While some of these countries admittedly have very low levels of Internet penetration and (poor) communications infrastructures, they present us with an opportunity to sell Malaysian products the traditional way – by our physical presence,” said Ceylinco Consolidated director Sanka Wijesinghe.
“Even before this agreement, we’ve already been selling building materials, furniture and agricultural equipment from Malaysia in these countries,” he added.
For more information, interested parties can call the SMI Association at (603) 5880-4088 or fax (603) 5880-4528.
Ceylinco Consolidated can be reached at (603) 8312-2100, KarenSoft at (604) 398-3648 or (603) 703-5787, Cordoda at (603) 8994-1628 and Hitachi at (603) 2031-8751.
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