FingerTec Distributor Business Guidebook
The whole company just came back from an all expenses paid trip to Shanghai. After a wind down, I am planning to spend most of my time in this last month of 2009 to write FingerTec Distributor Business Guidebook.
Company trip to Shanghai
What is a brand good for if it is just a logo affixed on a product? I always ponder about this, and I would not hesitate to do more for FingerTec. The Guidebook is in fact a round up of practical branding efforts we have done all these years and to extend it in an organized way for an easier adoption by our distributors. The main objectives are to help them increase sales, to improve cash flow and to reduce support costs in a more efficient way, I must say.
The Enlightenment
The idea had dawned on me on the last day I wrapped up my India trip, on the way to Mumbai Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport. I saw our effortless methods in strengthening Malaysia’s market and our global strategies in penetrating the international market can be combined and fine-tuned to further benefit our worldwide distributors, besides using our plentiful readily available branding materials.
The Buddha sat under the Bodhi Tree for 49 days to find his Enlightenment, but he spent the rest of his life teaching the theory of Karma, which spawn from the Enlightenment. I foresaw we would face a similar challenge. It is not merely the writing of the Guidebook, but if there is a gap between a distributor’s daily operation and the Guidebook, how should we convince the distributors to change their business conducts that they had accustomed to, even if they agreed to do it the FingerTec way.
Buddha and the Enlightenment
Patching up the flaws
I always detect flaws in some of our partners’ FingerTec business operations that deter their growths. When I was invited to give a talk, I would share my view (of course, a broad one without too much details) with them on how to tap on FingerTec resources for better business expansion, but it’s normally ended up in futile because old operation habits diehard. This time, a detailed Guidebook with follow-up monitoring system may yield a more constructive result.
Our first 5-year plan started in 2001 was more focused on technological research and development, which laid a strong groundwork for FingerTec products to soar. The second 5-year plan with a global marketing strategy was to spread our wings to as many countries as possible in the world. For this, I summed it up as a “Going Out” strategy, having our products currently presence in over 100 countries.
From Going-Out to Going-In
From Going-Out to Going-In
I had made up my mind long ago that the next 5-year plan should be a continuation of “Going Out”, which naturally succeeded by “Going In” strategy. But this strategy is bothering me every now and then, because it seems to me that we need to have a string of different sub-action plans in order to deal with different local partners, or to set up operation offices abroad to ensure the success of the plan. And I also realized that if we followed this costly conventional path, we will eventually loss in a maze of disorientation in our future plan.
For 2010, also the 10th Anniversary of FingerTec, this is the next 5-year milestone I set for FingerTec, to unite the Diaspora FingerTec partners around the world and to unleash FingerTec branding power through emphasizing the uniformity of strategy that extended from practical branding to business operation.
by Teh Hon Seng, CEO, FingerTec HQ
Stood Out In Mumbai
Since we were the only Malaysian exhibitor surrounded by an ocean of Chinese companies in China Sourcing Fair in Mumbai, the foremost questions we anticipated were, “What are the major differences between FingerTec products and China products?” and “Why should we Indian buy from your company while we are indulged by loads of cheaper China products?”
In fact, we received no such question at all. While thousands of Chinese exhibitors simply transformed the Exhibition Hall a China Town, FingerTec, among a handful of other countries’ booths available, stood out easily with local Indians handling inquiries.
Bhooshan & Imran, Compax handling crowds
Visit Compax office in Pune after the Trade Show
I agree that the intangible value might be less important for electronic components and consumer products, which constitute the larger part of the Sourcing Fair, but it’s hard to believe that security products which supposedly be more holistic in solution; software, the main driver of most security hardware, is also taken lightly by most Chinese players.
Without any doubt, low price is one of the best strategies. But for security and office automation products, it should be more than that because quality and reliability must be second to none. A question for users, do you want to enjoy (the price) first and suffer later? That’s why our partner for seven-year, Compax never turned to sell Biometrics products from China, although repeatedly approached and offered with attractively low price products. However, they did use the price lists from the Chinese competitors to negotiate with us.
In reality, FingerTec sales grew exponentially in India for the past few years. The more pricey Korean products also are in demand in India market. To me, this is a good sign. It proves that the Indian market starts to take other elements besides price into their consideration.
IFSEC India had just ended two weeks ago in Delhi; and now come the China Sourcing Fair in Mumbai. With huge crowds drawn to our booths in the two most populace cities in India, it should keep Compax busy for the coming months.
by Teh Hon Seng, CEO, FingerTec HQ
Quality Control Australian Style
At the Kings Park, Perth Australia
I went to Perth Australia last month for a short break. I had little idea about what Australia is going to offer me but from my readings people review that Perth is one of the best cities in the world and Australia is one of the best vacation spots in the world. A pretty good reason to pay a visit, isn't it?
We took advantage of the AirAsia-X offer, my husband and I flew to Perth to wind down in October. No doubt Perth is a gorgeous city. It's clean, organized and breathtakingly beautiful and peaceful. I don't fancy hustle and bustle, and I love the fact that the city takes its time. The shops are closed at 530pm on weekdays except Friday and a lot of people actually doing exercise outdoor. I took my own sweet time and relaxing as much as I could while enjoying what the city has to offer.
Many people that i know have the idea that Perth is boring (*wink). Well, it depends on what you are looking for. I beg to differ. I even saw with my own eyes a lady happily drinking while driving on early Friday night. Well, she actually waved and shouted at us happily from the car, offering us her drink. Carry on, mate!!
Boab Tree, Perth Australia
What I admire the most about Australia is it's border control. Nobody is an exception and even it's very early in the morning, the officers were all fired up. Very professional, very efficient. With that kind of control, I think a very small percent of offenders can get pass through them. I thought it's only during entry, exit also the same thing. I forgot to take out a jar of honey from my luggage and it's gone.
Quality control steps should be as detailed as Australian Border Control. Every unit has to be checked thoroughly to make sure no error escapes. Are we at the level of Australian Border Control, perhaps not yet but my plan is to name the department Quality Control Australian Style. I will get to it in 2010. Promise!
Enjoying fresh crabs at Fremantle, Perth Australia
by Norana Johar, COO, FingerTec HQ
Against All Odds
2009 is coming to an end. A pretty tough year in my book. The major disaster was the economy that decided to play pranks and left everybody exasperated. The value of money shrunk, reduced purchasing power and most probably would affect this fiscal year’s PNLs of most companies. The bad economy also had forced players to offer rock bottom dirt prices to opportunists, squeezing the already slim margin to almost flat.
Yet, against all odds, I think FingerTec has done a pretty great job in this year of ox.
Last Friday we had an internal meeting and for the first time were introduced to the prototype of Face ID. I’ve been in the business for almost a decade and I’ve never experienced anything like it. I’ve tried on iris when I was in New Delhi last year but this Face ID is a really cool machine. The gadget you thought was only available in movies.
The registration takes less than 2 minutes because the machine needs to get your face in 3 dimensions. Front, left, right, up and down. And, verification takes a split second, unless you cover your face or doing funny distorted facial expression, which trust me, a lot of users would attempt that in the first month of use.
Even when the room was dark, the machine spotted me. It’s truly awesome! The markets are going to be excited about Face ID just as I am and I reckon with the price that we are offering, the Face ID is going to do good in the market.
Another great product, which many customers are asking about, is Smart Keylock 8800. Yesterday I got the chance to experience the prototype that we are going to bring to India for the show, and again, I’m impressed. I’m not biased. I have seen and feel other products but this one is the ultimate. Registration and management of users can be done at this keylock itself through keypads and LCD. It has NO/NC feature, useful for visitor management. You can set the keylock at Normally Open if your office is accessible all day long or you can opt otherwise if you want every user who enters your room is verified before entry. The smart keylock has 2 latches. Motis on top and bar latch in the bottom, added security feature for installation on the front door or main doors of important rooms. The colors and finishing of this Keylock are sophisticated.
We are still doing some minor touch-ups on the Face ID to produce near-to- perfection machine. The release date is pushed back to end of December or early January 2010. The production of Keylock 8800 will start very soon.
Nonetheless, we accept pre-booking of Face ID and Keylock 8800 this month. No payment is required once you make a pre-booking (we will only request the payment prior to delivery).
by Norana Johar, COO, FingerTec HQ
Confirmed. It's me.
Ever come across any face recognition system? Since FingerTec FaceID 2 reader is due to be released only in January, I would like to recommend Picasa 3.0 if you want to experience face recognition system. Picasa 3.0 is a photo album management system provided by Google, free of charge.
Picasa 3.0 with face recognition tool
Thanks to Google’s acquisition of Neven Vision, a company that specialized in matching facial detail with readily available images in a centralized database, three years ago. The technology was then being transferred to Picasa 3.0. The technology helps to identify all faces in your pool of photos in groupings based on their similarities, which you can opt to tag them later. Picasa will automatically suggest the tags that suit to the faces the next time you upload new photos to your computer.
But Picasa may also capture the face of a lovely angel statue standing next to you and suggest that she is your girlfriend (you can pray for the statue to come to life, if you want to); or identify Mr. Obama in a poster and group him with one of your colored friends. Or some stranger’s faces might just pop up from nowhere when your picture was taken with a group of passersby. With all these limitations, you still need to edit your photos by removing or regrouping all the errors to finally get the tags right. Still, despite all, it’s pretty much a useful tool.
How about FingerTec® FaceID reader, can it differentiate statue, poster or photo from a real face? That’s the major difference between 2D and 2D+3D (FingerTec® FaceID) facial recognition technology. FaceID will easily identify a pictured face as negative unless it is a waxwork that looks very real, or perhaps a twin. For Picasa face recognition, it searches the entire stack of your 2D photos; but for FingerTec FaceID, you have to enroll before performing identification for time attendance or access control, which lessens the burden of fuzzy logic search.
FingerTec FaceID 2
Biometrics recognition system is getting closer to our everyday’s life. Another application that has been quietly adopted without most people being aware is biometric signature recognition system in banking industry. When you sign a check, some banks have already transferred the recognition job from visual inspection by an officer to a biometric signature recognition system. The system will measure and analyze the physical activity of signing, your strokes order, the pressure applied and the speed.
Below is a joke that I would like to share with you.
“Could you please identify yourself, madam,” a bank teller expects an old woman to produce her identity card when withdrawing a large amount of cash from her savings account.
Indeed, the bewildered old woman slowly opened her handbag, took out a small mirror, looked into it for a while before raising her head, “Confirmed. It’s me.”
That’s the same humor phrase that we use in our brochure and poster for FingerTec FaceID 2 reader.
In fact, who can identify you better than you could? But the fact remains that most of us are nobody or merely a stranger to others; hence we have to rely on a medium to provide an unambiguous and undisputable identification. What else better than a biometric recognition machine to identify a human? And among the Biometrics products, what else better than FingerTec brand as a perfect choice?
by Teh Hon Seng, CEO, FingerTec HQ
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