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Success
Stories
By Michael Alan Hamlin
February 2, 2004
Last week the peso hit a new low,
presidential aspirant Fernando Poe Jr. finally revealed he has a
temper when asked if the plunge was tied to his candidacy, and local
businesspersons began to fret openly about the impact of a Poe presidency
on the economy and the perception of international investors. But
as I've suggested in the past few weeks, none of that matters much
to a broad spectrum of companies in traditional and non-traditional
sectors that remain enthusiastic about doing business here.
A good non-traditional example is Global Infrastructure Holdings
(GIH), a unit of the now combined India-based Ispat/LNM Group, the
second largest steel company in the world. It has offices in 45
countries and 120,000 employees. GIH acquired control of National
Steel Corporation late last year, and will formally inaugurate the
company's rehabilitated plant in Iligan City tomorrow. According
to Iligan City major Franklin M. Quijano, somewhere around 3,000
ecstatic citizens will be on hand to watch President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo
push the "start button" and get the city's largest taxpayer
back on line.
GiveMe Unlimited (GiveMe), a local enterprise and wireless solutions
provider, is a good non-traditional - and SME-sized - example of
a fast-growing, enthusiastic-about-the-future firm. The company
recently reported a whopping 1,000 percent growth in revenues and
customer base, the result, according to a top executive, of its
participation in the 2003 e-Services Philippines exhibition. The
company grew its clientele from 10 to over 100, forged reseller
alliances with both small and big-name industry players, and expanded
its network of contacts from less than 200 to over 3,000.
The annual e-Services Philippines exhibition, as you know, is the
Philippines' premiere e-Services outsourcing show. The exhibit,
organized annually by the Center for International Trade Expositions
and Missions (CITEM), showcases the expertise of local and multinational
companies providing services to the contact center, medical transcription,
software development, business process outsourcing (BPO), shared
financial, and animation sectors.
Established in 2001 with less than 20 employees, GiveMe's growth
over the past year was an impressive and unprecedented achievement,
according to Erick Kalugdan, president and chief software developer
of the company. As a new player, GiveMe was expecting slow if deliberate
growth in 2003 due to those famously weak economic conditions, intense
competition among mobile application developers, and limited resources
for costly advertising campaigns.
Kalugdan explained to me that the company was fortunate to join
last year's exposition and take advantage of the exposure and publicity
it provided to exhibitors. The company sold 40 licenses for its
wireless solution "InfoTXT Messaging" - with a value of
approximately P2.4 million - in the six months following the exhibit.
Sales were primarily driven by the instant popularity and media
publicity InfoTXT gained when it was named recipient of the e-Services
Best Product Award for Wireless Applications for 2003, according
to Kalugdan.
"In less than a year, we closed over 40 contracts on our own,
excluding those generated by our growing network of resellers. This
rapidly and dramatically increased our revenues and our user network
now extends to the hospitality, power and utilities, shipping, manufacturing,
and airline industries, as well as the public sector," he said.
Among GiveMe's big-name clients are Caltex Philippines, Shangri-La
Hotel Makati, Hotel Intercontinetal Manila, Manulife, Permanent
Plans, Forex Cargo, Maersk Philippines, and the National Power Corporation.
All use InfoTXT for sales, distribution, and customer service processes,
according to Kalugdan.
InfoTXT specializes in the "convergence" of SMS (short
messaging system) mobile telephony with desktop computing. It allows
companies to send and receive text messages using PCs and facilitates
retrieval of information through SMS. "The software can be
interfaced with any enterprise system. It can be used to respond
to customer inquiries, announce product offerings and events, update
customers or employees with new information, communicate alerts,
track shipments, and broadcast job openings, power interruptions,
company procedures, and any other information employees and clients
will benefit from," Kalugdan said.
"e-Services was instrumental to the growth of our company and
the success and popularity of our InfoTXT software. Its rewards
were simply unrestricted - it offered us the right venue to communicate
with direct buyers, discuss issues with different trade delegations
and groups, and network with potential resellers and service partners.
It helped us to facilitate business transactions, and effectively
promote our products at a fraction of the cost of media advertisements.
We couldn't have got this far this fast on our own," Kalugdan
explained.
The 2004 e-Services exhibit will take place February 12-13 at the
EDSA Shangri-La Hotel, Manila. Participants can tour over 100 product
and services displays, and attend special conference sessions on
the current state of the e-Services sectors, emerging trends, and
forecasts. e-Services will also feature awards for best exhibitors
and products and a short animated film competition for students
and amateur animators.
So get your mind off all the reasons some businesses are paralyzed
with worry, and see some of the companies that are determined to
succeed no matter what at e-Services Philippines.
(Michael Alan Hamlin is the managing
director of consultancy TeamAsia and the author of three books on
Asian economies and companies. His latest book is Marketing Asian
Places, of which he is a co-author (Wiley, 2001), and he is currently
at work on High Visibility: The Making and Marketing of Asian Professionals
into Celebrities. Write him at mahamlin@teamasia.com.).
Copyright © 2003 Michael Alan
Hamlin. All Rights Reserved.
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