Category: Finance & Business

After spending 10 years in information technology, I decided to switch to a business unit of a financial division when an opportunity arose. I have always been curious about how it would be on ‘the other side’ of work. Turn out it wasn’t as difficult as I thought as many skills that I learned in computing days are transferable to solving business problems. Instead of aiming to get the system up and running as it should be, now is the business and financial outcomes that I need to focus on. The difficult part is actually the people relationship and office politics.

My turning point came when I was tasked to take over a profit center unit. It has a revenue of approx. $30 million with a profit margin of about 50%. Not too bad, except it was a hot potato. The service was running on an obsolete technology platform, so old that the hardware is no longer supported and we frequently have to source worldwide for replacement. Both customers and our company doesn’t want the high cost of technology replacement yet the mission given to me was “don’t lose the profit”. 

We changed the business model from a technology provider to a provider of access to the marketplace. We bring in technology partners for technical services and we focus on expanding our connectivity as well as customer base and allow foreign firms direct access to our marketplace. We also change our pricing model to a small percentage of traded value instead of fixed terminal price. The result, we grew our revenue to more than 5 times with a profit margin exceeding 80%. 

My entrepreneurship came unintended. I was on a family trip which we booked a full-size coach for our extended family members of around 30 people. I spent many hours talked to my 2 cousins-in-law who run a small tuition center. We talked about the education business and I shared ideas of how I see the business potentials and how they can expand their business.

It was the year 2007. being in the financial industry and having gone through 2 major financial crises, it wasn’t difficult to sense that a storm is coming. In my own investment portfolio, I identified 4 industries that are resilient to financial turmoil; government projects, healthcare, education, and gaming (include casino). So in the following year, I decided to make the switch and join the team.

We revamp the business into 2 tracks; academy focus and personal enrichment. The business revenue grew double year by year for the first few years and continues to grow at a healthy rate after. However, not all businesses are successful, including my investment into a vocational institution. The business was promising when I invested in it but the climate changed completely after a change in government policy which made the business not viable. That’s a painful lesson.

One thing I learned, getting into a business is easy but coming out can be very difficult. So, always plan for an exit strategy, for good and for bad.

In 2013, I started my own consultancy firm. Our clients are mainly large family-run businesses in emerging markets like Myanmar and China. My team comprises of professionals of multidisciplinary so that we can provide a 360 holistic management consultancy work. In this team, you can really experience cultural diversity here as not only the members are of different educational backgrounds and professions, they are also from different countries. Among the 11 consultants, we have 8 nationalities. It was fun and also makes me believe that diversity makes a better team.