entrepreneur (Autosaved) (Autosaved) Essay

Contents TOC o “1-3” h z u Reflect on a successful entrepreneur in the 21st century. PAGEREF _Toc3576810 h 2Identify and demonstrate how this person acquired the skills and opportunities to be a successful entrepreneur in the 21st century. PAGEREF _Toc3576811 h 7 Reflect on a successful entrepreneur in the 21st century.Sen Heng Electric (KL) Pte Ltd Bhd is one of Malaysia’s popular chain of home appliance retailers. SenHeng Electric was founded by Lim brothers Lim Kim Heng, Lim Kim Chieng and Lim Kim Yew.

In Malaysia, Senheng has 125 outlet stores in 2015 and 5 outlets in Vietnam. Sen Heng Electric (KL) Pte Ltd Bhd sells many different products, such as smartphones, TV sets, washing machines, etc., from different brands such as Panasonic, Pensonic, Sharp and so on. With SenHeng, when they want to buy an appliance, it is convenient for both the individual and the family.The idea to start SenHeng was that founder Lim Kim Heng and his wife, Tai Nyet Lian, opened a store to support their expanding ballet cake business for their three-phase power supply, and found that leaving half of the store was a waste of full use.

The founder had started the tutu cake business with RM14000 and their first stall in Yaohan. However, the founder found that the electrical business had brought in more revenue than the cake business, therefore the founder had decided to sell the cake shop lock, stock, and barrel to a friend.SenHeng Electric (KL) Sdn. Bhd was established in 1989 by Lim brothers and it is a small consumer electronics shop in Pandan Jaya. In that year, the founder and managing director Lim Kim Heng, his wife and two technicians work in SenHeng with only RM90000 capital. According to Lim Kim Heng, he said SenHeng was not popular and no brand in the public and market, everyone doesn’t know SenHeng in that time. Not only that, but they were also difficult to get good support and inventory. Because suppliers also didn’t know SenHeng. The founder also said they didn’t have the delivery team to deliver the product to the customer after they placed the order to them. Therefore, they need to deliver the good to the customers’ houses at 6 pm every day after finishing work with his brothers. In 1993, Lim went to Taiwan to observe and learn firsthand how a chain store operates. The exposure in Taiwan taught him how to standardize his business processes and procedures easier to run his stores. The founder said that, when the things cant find in local, the only ways is we should go out of the country to learn. The reason that the founder said that is because the different country has a different style to operate a business, we should think out of the box. After he comes back from Taiwan, he adopted the business model employes at renowned chain stores like Poh Kong, 7 Eleven, and 99Speedmart. This is because he gets the idea from Taiwan and he applies the model that he learns from Taiwan to his own business which is SenHeng.In 1995, SenHeng Electric (KL) Sdn. Bhd launched the franchise program, however, that was later discontinued. This is because lack of management system and the brand was not popular at that time, therefore the franchise program to be put on hold. By they stop the franchise program in 1995, they relaunched again the program on December 1996. Senheng started its nationwide expansion initiative by opening its first outlet in Negeri Sembilan and then Malacca. After that, Senheng starts setting up more and more outlet in Malaysia and also opened the first outlet in Vietnam and until now SenHeng have over 100 outlets in Malaysia and also have some outlet in Vietnam.In 2014 to 2016, the founder found that the business was declining the sales by about 6-7 percent annually. In that time, the trend in the market, peoples started to buy the product on the internet. The founder discovered that customer traffic had migrated from offline to online also. Therefore, SenHeng also started their online business and in-store business. This business is operated separately, each in its own warehouse and with different activities. Therefore, SenHeng launched a seamless business model called SEAMLESS 2.0 in September 2017. This changes their 121 retail stores nationwide with an effective online channel to offer more value-added O2O shopping experience.SenHeng’s SEAMLESS 2.0 platform uses big data to provide shoppers with a continuous, relevant connection cycle before and after purchase. In the SenHeng Seamless business model, they are immersed in nine elements of product, pricing, inventory, logistics, payment models, repairs and services, loyalty programs, promotions, and sales partner benefits. For example, SenHeng’s payment method. SenHeng offers a variety of payment models, such as credit card payment options, redemption facilities, and installment financing programs, to ensure that online buyers enjoy the same variety of payment methods as in-store buyers. Not only that, but SenHeng also provides after-sales service. Customers can use the app to track the progress of their service requests. They can also make any queries anywhere with the quick chat that comes with the SenHeng app, and the nearest store manager will respond within 15 minutes.According to Lim Kim Heng, they are seeing an online to the offline revolution that changes the way people shop. Ultimately, the consumers expect a seamless shopping experience across various channels that can be accessed whenever and however they choose. The idea is to enhance customer shopping experience and retailer that do not meet these expectations will lose traffic. They want to simplify and personalize the shopping experience for our customer. They want the customer to continue coming into our stores to view our products and make a purchase anywhere, anytime by playing online via their smartphones or tablets. Ultimately, they want to scale up deliveries, with each store being able to fulfill thousands of orders a day. Therefore, the company went on to become the leading consumer electronics chain stores with 125 outlets in Malaysia.Before the founder success in the business, he also faces some problem during the SenHeng implemented an enterprise-wide ERP system which is enterprise resources planning to manage its business operation. In SenHeng, they need to handle a number of information from sales, consumer, inventory and supply chain operation that added up to a multi-terabytes database. The IT department needs to generate more than 100 reports for some 150 core business users that included senior management, divisional and departmental heads and HR managers on any given week. However, the ERP system couldn’t cope with the volume of reporting required, this is because the system took too long to generate reports and consumed too many resources while doing it. Not only that, the lack of access to timely information was a source of frustration for users. Therefore, SenHeng needs an effective way to share its metric reports with its top suppliers. According to Mah, it was impossible to make it, since the supplier could not access to SenHeng database to monitor the performance of their respective products.SenHeng have researched into the technology that available in SenHeng to identify the solution that meets the criteria which is the system that is scalable, robust and come with full comprehensive analytics and mobile architecture and an easy to use, web-based analytics platform that empowers users to access huge database and execute reports tailored to their individual user profile. After the SenHeng researched, they decided on MicroStrategy. The retailer implemented MicroStrategy’s core Business Intelligence(BI) solution in 2005 and further added mobile functionalities in 2011. According to Mah, the MicroStrategy’s Analytics platform offered intuitive analytical tools and could handle large volumes of data from many sources without slowing down the whole network. The implementation process was very easy and the transition to MicroStrategy’s technology was seamless. This is because the MicroStrategy team was knowledgeable and offered great support to the users when they moved to the new platform.MicroStrategy enables SenHeng user immediately and securely access the extensive database for reporting and analysis. The data discovery technology allows the executives to analyze information without complicated scripts, data models or help from IT. Before implementing the MicroStrategy, the legacy system cannot handle a large volume of reports being generated, users dependent on the IT department to generate reports and no real-time access to information to make accurate decisions. After SenHeng implemented the MicroStrategy, the system is the robust and scalable platform that grows in tandem with expanding database, better decision making with more accurate reports and powerful visualization and improved overall business profitability and organizational productivity. According to Mah, after SenHeng implemented the MicroStrategy platform, the system is very stable and is able to handle a large volume of analytical processing, despite the fact that the data has more than doubled since the 2005 implementation.Since the transition to MicroStrategy, the profitability of Senheng® has improved its business. Sales increased by more than 10% year-on-year, further strengthening Senheng®’s position as the top consumer electronics retailer in Malaysia. Through districts, stores and markets, management can be seen more clearly, and quick decisions can be made based on facts, and even actions can be taken to reduce SKU levels. In last, SenHeng successfully starts his business in SenHeng and transformed his business from cakes shop to electronic chain stores and have over 100 of the outlet around Malaysia and also in Vietnam. Identify and demonstrate how this person acquired the skills and opportunities to be a successful entrepreneur in the 21st century. SenHeng beliefs that implemented in the business is to build a strong and ever growing company, create more quality job opportunity as a contribution to the nation. Second, to ensure the quality of living continuously improves, they believe in develop talents through the mean of their internal unique training and development program and continues to contribute to the nation. Third, through the enhancement of competitiveness and competency of the company, they believe they can generate greater contribution in the form of Tax revenues to the country. Last, they lead and share the best practices of SenHeng amongst the local SME and thus creating a healthy business ecosystem for the country.SenHeng Electric (KL) Sdn. Bhd successful in the 21 century and the main reason is SenHeng co-funder able to learn the first hand about the price of poor data, not only that, but he also makes use of his data and makes an accurate decision. In 1999, the founder realizes that his business needed to use the IT and at that time, the founder only has small data. This is the journey of the founder start in his life. Before that, the founder has gone to Taiwan to learn how the retailers used the IT to run their stores and after he comes back from Taiwan, he applies his franchise model that learns from Taiwan. After he operates until 40 outlets in Malaysia, he had collected a lot of basic data and the sales and inventory, however, he did not know how to use it. Luckily, the founder has got to use the data and gathering more data from the customer and rank it to the payment method preferred by the customers. In the same year 1999, SenHeng started to build his in-house ERP system through a third party. In the year 2002, the founder found that the data was late to receive when he ask for the sales data. The founder starts to find another way to fix the problem and luckily he found a way that can solve his problem. His business team told him to invest in BI which is business intelligence, this investment can help the founder to solve his problem and get more data that he wanted. The founder had invested RM500000 to implement in SenHeng chain and the revenue has grown up to RM200 million in a year and spread across 80 stores nationwide. Unfortunately, when there was no dashboard, this makes his frustration. This is because the data in their database was cannot use anymore and the customer data of the company had been capturing for years was not in the standardized forms. After they fixed it, SenHeng has been enjoying double-digit growth in every year and over the RM1 billion revenue in 2013. The founder knows the BI tool for SME can use to improve their productivity and cost management, however, that was also a problem to them which needs high investment and hire a suitable person to help them in the business and the data journey. The founder has split off the BI team into a separate company called Black Box Consultancy Sdn Bhd to solve the problem. The problem of SenHeng is the big data was crack when used. It was 2 million customer base, but the founder cannot communicate and sell the product to them. Therefore, they partnering with AIG and relying on the data set to help him identify customers likely to purchase insurance. With the almost 20 year experience in the data industry, RM50 million investment in the infrastructure part of the e-commerce and with his own company, BI. Not only that, but the founder of SenHeng also invested some capital which is RM5 million to build the information technology infrastructure and human capacity development in the seamless program that implemented in the business. More and more program launched by the founder in his business, there was also more investors to invest in the business. Another investment is the founder invest RM4 million to materialize the vision, they target to go totally seamless and paperless by mid of 2018. The founder does develop his own personal quality to his business. First, integrity. SenHeng did provide the warranty for the product and the program is PlusOne Service contract and Senheng one to one replacement warranty service. By the founder provided the warranty service to the customer, this shows that the founder is integrity to his customer. When the customer bought a broken product or the product broke in the time that within the warranty period, the company will change a new product or repair for the customers. The requirement for the SenHeng one to one replacement warranty service is when the customer detects the electrical defects within the warranty period, the customers can have service with SenHeng which is SenHeng will change or repair the product that bought from customers. The founder also has self-awareness in his business. In 1993, the founder has gone to Taiwan and learn how the chain store operates, and after came back from Taiwan, he standardizes his business processes and procedures to run his outlets in an easier way. He adopted the knowledge that learns from Taiwan to his own business and becomes an electronics chain stores in Malaysia. The founder has the self-awareness that his business cannot operate in the ways that before he went to Taiwan if the owner didn’t go to Taiwan and learn, he will not success opened the chain outlets in Malaysia. Next, the founder also concerns for his employees and customers. In SenHeng, they have provided the training to their employees and train them to be polite and listen and understand to the customer. The employees trained to understand the requirement of customers when they want to purchase the product and suggest a suitable product for the customers. Not only that, but they also concern about the customers, they do provide the home delivery system to the customers. The customers can select the time that want SenHeng to deliver the product to their home and they can just pick up the product at that time. This is a convenience to the customer that busy and no time to pick up. SenHeng also gives a free rice cooker to the customer when their delivery team is an hour late to deliver their product, this is the way of apology in SenHeng to their customers. SenHeng also conducts a paperless program in their business. SenHeng tried to go paperless because human cutting down a lot of trees by just want using the paper, SenHeng also realizes that they also use a lot of paper in their paperwork such as a document, invoices, payslips, and tendency agreements. The founder conducted this paperless program in his business is an action to save the world and protecting generation to sustain in the future. Therefore, SenHeng has engaged the service with Korean, Japanese and Malaysian companies to help them in the paperless operation in his business. Last, the founder also has the leadership traits in himself. He dares to think big and dreams big to his business. He dare to invest 100 million to his business on the IT part and at that time, they only have 200 million in the company. The founder also said that, if you are the CEO in the company and you need to lead the company and make the decision, the CEO must need to know what is going on and why you do the decision in that ways. For example, he flew to Taiwan to learn how to duplicate the stores and operates chain store in Malaysia. Therefore, SenHeng has become the largest electronic chain stores in Malaysia. In conclusion, SenHeng is the first business that put the effort in the data and runs their business, although they faced a lot of problem such as the capital was not enough, data cannot use, and other problem. They also invest in their business with the various program such as invest in the Business intelligence and enterprise resource planning program.