Recognizing the Need for Change
Barracuda Campus Sdn Bhd (formerly known
as Techsense Web Sdn Bhd) founder and chief executive officer Alim Ling Woh
Soon, 45, talks to LIM WING HOOI about how he diversified from weather
monitoring systems to developing their own cloud-based campus management
system, with clients from the education community.
I worked as a system integrator (SI) for a
local company for over eight years, majoring in airport systems integration.
Naturally, I wanted to be my own boss and
be able to decide my own development path. As I saw many opportunities at that
time, apart from just waiting for tenders from airports,
I started the company Techsense Web Sdn
Bhd in 2003, to develop weather systems for meteorology departments.
With a rented office in Desa Sri Hartamas,
Kuala Lumpur and just seven staff, we provided our services to the loci
government, and other countries such as Myanmar, Indonesia and Bangladesh.
In time, we realised the business was too
niche and directly competing with established American and European companies.
With the network and market reputation of our competitors ahead of us, we knew
it was going to be very tough for us. So we started looking around for a new
turf.
The Malaysian Information and
Communications Technology (ICT) economy has always been driven largely by the
Government, government-linked companies (GLCs) or financial institutions (ICT).
Most of the people in the industry, from contractors to clients, usually do
their procurement depending on foreign ideas or products.
For example, when a renown international
networking system company introduces a new product, its Malaysian partner will
start approaching" the prospects and selling the idea. The customers will
then allocate a budget to purchase.
When the tender is opened, the market will
be very excited and SI companies will try their luck, spending sleepless
nights preparing their proposals before submitting them and waiting for
results. Whether they win or lose the tender, the same cycle starts all over
again for the next product or project.
This business
environment leaves very few entrepreneurs are willing to invest in building business
applications both Malaysia and the world market. Instead of focusing acquiring
strong domain knowledge, the “wait for tender” mentality has also discouraged
entrepreneurs to think long-term as well.
Domain knowledge is essential for product
development. Most IT expertise “solve” problems, but lack the skill to identify”
potential problems. We saw a growing need for e education market, and we
renamed our earlier company to Barracuda Campus Sdn Bhd to focus on IT
solutions r education institutions instead.
My sales staff performed a basic survey of
100 institutions Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore, and found that at least 80%
of them don’t have a fully integrated back-end Deration and management system
to help them run their education institutions. These institutions are
profitable, and the demand for education continues to rise exponentially.
As a new player, we used a cloud-based
model to reduce the cost for clients. After all, we only charge our customers based
on their active students, and these students are already paying fees to the
institutions.
In 2011, we added another five staff
members to develop the cloud-based Campus Management System (CMS), developing
five basic modules on a monthly subscription model and began marketing to our
clients that same year.
Today, we have 17 modules with about 50
monthly paying customers. We have also expanded to 20 staff, operating in Cyberjaya.
Was it difficult raising funds for your business?
We talked to some banks and government institutions for
grants or loans, but we are a new software company and they were not keen. We
know we have to be prudent and rely on our own savings. And we know it is going
to be a long journey...
What is your business model?
The CMS helps to track students’ progress,
from registration, syllabus, co-curricular activities, examination to the day
they graduate. Clients pay monthly, based on the modules they subscribe to and
multiply that with the number of active students. We support all users directly
via email and commit to an hour-long response time.
Tell us your motto or philosophy.
Life’s a journey, not a destination. Enjoy
every bit with utmost sincerity and honesty.
Tell us more about your business
I like to read. Especially on the subjects
of economy and technology.
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