Wired for Success! Network Event Inspires Action

At today’s ICEHOUSE Network Event in Auckland, we had the pleasure of hearing from an impressive line-up of speakers about their own journey to success and their different approaches to improving New Zealand’s economic growth.

Speakers included Tim Longhurst, Business Futurist; Chris Quin, CEO Gen i; Rob Adams, Entrepreneur, Venture Capitalist and Author; Sarah Gibbs, Co-Founder of Trilogy; Vinny Lohan, Founder and CEO, OneBeep.

As a business futurist, Tim framed up our afternoon with some insight into business trends, talking about harnessing the power of small, collapsing barriers and relying on the wisdom in the group. He talked of the 10c campaign and multinationals acting small with campaigns that break down barriers between them and their customers. We work-shopped current trends; defined our own ways to take action on our most important priority and threw darts.

Wired for success, Sarah Gibbs shared her own extraordinary story of entrepreneurial success in the very tough and competitive world of skincare. It takes on average 15 -18 years to build a company in New Zealand and take it global. It took Sarah and her sister just 10 years to set up their company for $20K and sell it for $20m. Her advice could be best summed up – use a little common sense, connectivity is key, hire givers not takers, culture rules, future is in the hands of the customer, focus on digital, future success will be rewarded on social and economic responsibility. Truly inspiring!

Fresh off a flight from India where he now lives, Vinny Lohan captivated us with his realistic view of doing business in India. Recognised by General Electric’s Alva Emerging Fellowship, Vinny’s company OneBeep is harnessing technology to provide a simple, effective and low-cost way to share daily lessons to millions of Indian children without access to the internet. Vinny is determined to make a difference. It is an enormous task, requiring incredible vision and the smarts to overcome many obstacles.  Interestingly, I was let into a little secret with OneBeep while Vinny was here in NZ – at the world-wide finals for the Microsoft Imagine Cup in Sydney Vinny will detail how he is going to make OneBeep open source to get the technology into developing countries – very cool.

As part of a panel discussion, Rob Adams urged all early stage businesses to go through a process of market validation. It may sound like a simple idea, but if you can prove the validity of a market opportunity then the odds for success are far greater. Rob is visiting from the U.S and is leading a series of market validation workshops throughout the country. If interested, register from The ICEHOUSE website – this is part of Rob’s annual visit to NZ hosted by us.

The ICEHOUSE Network event was not only an opportunity to hear the trials, tribulations and triumphs of the speakers, but a valuable opportunity for over 300 entrepreneurs and business owners to spend time connecting with other great talent across different industry sectors.

Last year we launched our ambitious 3000.org.nz target with a view to accelerating New Zealand’s economic growth by radically increasing internationally capable and competitive businesses by 2020. MSI’s internship programme, BNZ and NZTE co funding of small businesses, a focus on improved board appointments, Movac Fund 4 and the Global from Day One  seed funds are all steps toward inspiring and supporting our entrepreneurs and business owners so that that they have the tools and network to grow into an economic success story.

Lets get it on. There is so much to do if we are going to achieve our potential.

The Competitive Landscape has Changed
With the development of the web and information technologies through the 90’s the business world has had the opportunity to rethink process design. Changes in business model possibilities, logistics and money controls have been harnessed by many countries to develop new competitive advantages in global markets. However my observation of many SMEs and some larger businesses in New Zealand is that there is a general malady in the area of business process design. The World Economic Forum’s annual analysis of our global competitiveness (www.weforum.org) shows a slow uptake of technology by New Zealand firms in comparison to our competitors, and that we have in fact a competitive disadvantage arising from a lack of process sophistication.

Ten Principles of Business Process Redesign for e-Business
The following ten principles form a great set of steps towards competing on speed, cost and customer satisfaction by upgrading your process designs.

1. Streamline (remove waste, simplify, and consolidate similar activities)
2. Lose wait (eliminate waiting time between process stages)
3. Orchestrate (outsource/insource to the most efficient enterprise or operator)
4. Mass customise (any time, any place, any way)
5. Synchronise (run physical and electronic processes side by side)
6. Digitise and propagate (capture information once at the source and spread it throughout the process)
7. Vitrify (provide process reports in real time with full data)
8. Sensitise (build in automated sensors for monitoring and feedback on the process performance)
9. Connect, collect and analyse (leverage process data and information into valuable business knowledge, and apply it to the design of superior products and services)
10. Personalise (make the process intimate with the preferences and habits of users of the process)

(see El Sawy, O. A., “Redesigning Enterprise Processes for e-Business” McGraw-Hill, 2001)

The First Step – Process Mapping
To understand how the human body works you have to see all of its parts, systems and functions; and how they are all connected together in one integrated system that allows the biology of the body to function as a ‘whole’. Understanding how a business functions requires the same holistic view of all the parts and their interconnectivity. The problem in many businesses is that there is often no understanding of the whole business process picture. Each person or work group might understand the part that they do, but no one has a whole-company/whole-process view.

The answer is to use process mapping software to create diagrams of each process and its connection to others. Common products to do this are Aris (IDS Scheer), Sharepoint Designer and Visual Studio (Microsoft), and iGrafx (Corel Inc.) The diagram below (Fig 1.) shows an iGrafx process map for a simple Order Fulfilment Process that involves the customer, three process stages and four company departments.

The companies on the Mission included:

• Medtech Global 
• OmniMax
• Orion Health
• Pingar
• Vista Entertainment 
• Simtics
• Xlerate
• NZICT

Below are some reflectons I got from the visit, but first what our objectives were.

By going on the Trade Mission, we were interested in

1. Market Understanding – I personally had never been before, and we have a 5 year strategy of growing our knowledge and networks in Asia including India
2. Networks – develop networks to assist ICEHOUSE and Kiwi companies that are looking to enter the Indian market
3. Angel Investors – continue forging connections with angel investors in India building on relationships with the Indian Angel Network and Mumbai Angels
4. Partners – continue developing a growing relationship with CMC which is a global systems integration and IT services firm, and a subsidiary of Tata, the multinational Indian company.
5. Company Specific: I was also looking for specific market opportunities for some companies including eBus www.ebus.tv, Down to Earth Systems www.downtoearthsystems.com, Live Links www.charge.co.nz and FaceMe www.faceme.co.nz

So yes, it was not about ‘deals’ from the get-go, more about building a case to succeed over the longer term, just like we are currently doing with initiatives in Singapore, Japan and China.

So how did the Mission go? It was fantastic, here are some thoughts on the experience and then further below what I have taken from this for ‘doing business’ in India:

1. Travel in India can be challenging for the inexperienced, 2-3 meetings per day max. Having said that, getting things like drivers (mandatory, unless you are mad) is easily done.
2. You get sick, most of us did, but it aint that bad really. Apart from when I got to Singapore, story for another day!
3. The market is so huge, so competitive and so complex that you have to realise it is completely different to the world of NZ. This means naturally that we have to adapt to the conditions there before they really take us seriously.
4. NZTE were fantastic, not only in NZ but also on the ground in India and also out of Singapore. Why? Well they know what works in India and they know how to leverage. They got us huge profile at Nasscom and other events. They used Sir Richard Hadlee as a high profile key note speaker, Indians generally love cricket, and they had on tap their in region sales and marketing professionals to assist the companies with connections, profile and mentoring. I really do like the way the NZTE model is morphing, particularly with this ‘in-region’ sales and marketing resource, which I understand is across 5 regions now.
5. We had a great reception from the angel groups and investors in India – they are open, ready to learn from others who might be more experienced (read New Zealand), and interested in syndicated deals. This is natural because I predict there will be a wall of money (yes even more than now) trying to get into India, just because of the market size.
6. I was very lucky to be accepted by the other companies on the Mission – people like Manoj Doli from Xlerate and Chris de Boer and Tarun Kanji of Pingar – these guys are experienced in India, doing business already and always willing to lend a hand. I also thought Candace Kinser of NZICT was a rock-star for brand NZ. She was tireless in her interviews and cheer-leading for the country and technology companies.

Ok, so doing business in India, implications which are focused on technology solutions

1. Partnering

• A well respected local strategic partner is essential to doing business in India. Particularly so when dealing with Government entities or large enterprises.
• Sometimes you might have to go through the pain of ‘direct on your own’ first, to get the credibility to get a partner. One of our companies had to do this, and it was not an ideal way to go.

2.    Pricing

• -All discussions/negotiations should be in Rupees or alternatively, US$
• -Free trial or proof of concept is the excepted norm, in fact is required
• Taking a ‘NZ-pricing’ model to India does not work, because of scale pricing could be as high as 1/100th

3.    Market Penetration

• Focus is typically to go for ‘scale first’ and ‘profit last’, claim the market and then build the margin (this is very difficult for Kiwi companies to get their head around)
• India is a market of markets, major business happens in Mumbai however
• There are many different routes to market, which can also tend to be very ‘relationship driven’

4.    Presence

• It is critical to spend time ‘in the market’ and be present to build relationships which are critical in India
• Sales cycles are long and involve serious commitment in terms of time, money and resources
• Customers expect products/services sold to them to be around for a while, not disappear overnight

OK, that is the update on India – in April I head to China to do the same, learn observe and act. 5 cities in 12 days, going to be cool.

Thanks again to NZTE for organizing an incredible eye-opener to India.

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