Customs Blue Operations Strategy

The Royal Malaysian Customs Department has launched its latest compliance drive, seeking to collect RM3bil in unpaid Goods and Services Tax (GST) and it's called Customs Blue Operations Strategy (CBOS) 3.0, aims to collect twice the amount collected in its second operation conducted last year. The previous CBOS 2.0 was launched in Sep 2016.

CBOS 3.0 will see the department taking a friendlier approach, by educating companies on “Informed Compliance” instead of punishing them through “Enforced Compliance”.

About 600 officers from the Customs Department's GST, Compliance and Enforcement divisions would take part in the door-to-door operations.

They are expected to visit 200,000 of the 434,000 GST-registered premises during CBOS 3.0 that runs until Dec 31.

Companies found behind in their payments or paperwork will be given one month, from the date of the visit, to comply.

Those that fail to comply could face legal action and be fined for up to 40% of their unpaid dues.

It was reported that Customs targets to collect up to RM42bil in GST this year, compared with RM41.2bil in 2016.

The government coffer is getting drier much faster than it can be top-up.

If you're a abiding business that yet to use a GST accounting system, you can subscribe to Datapuri Financial System (details at www.datapuri.com). It better later than never and save that 40% fine.

Are you are good boss?

Are you are good boss? Being a boss is hardly any fun. You are shouldered with the burden of getting your team to deliver the job, on time, on budget. And in the business world, to the satisfaction of the customer.

Apart from your own duties, your day to day task is monitor your team performance and resolve conflict (or in our company, we call it fire-fighting). With all those thing going on, you must also find time to plan and develop their talents.

Many would ask, how do you develop a team that achieves greater things? It starts with this question, "Do you have a clear idea of what's important and where your team needs to be?".

If yes, do you listen more than you talk?

What's more important? Supporting my team to work well or getting lots of work done.

Do you ask your team for feedback on how are you doing? Myself, once. Note to self: Need this at least once a year.

What is management to you? The responsibility for the performance of a team or being in charge.

Do you constantly try to improve your leadership and management skills?

Do you take regular self assessments?

Do you give your team recognition at least once a week?

Do you delegate jobs to the right person and communicate well?

Do you work hard to make your team trust you?

If you have some positives answer to the questions above, then you're a good boss but there's room for improvement.

If you have all positives answer to the questions above, then you're a great boss.

Click on the image below for a full flowchart and see how you really stack up.

Image: marketingprofs

"The task of the leader is to get his people from where they are to where they have not been." ~ Henry Kissinger

Building A Company Brand and Product Brand

We're pursuing on improving our Pasti Nyala brands so I thought of publishing this article, sourced from performancemagazine.org. It is basic but good enough for a starter.

Our two main brands that we are currently focusing are to improve our Company and our product brand which is called DATAPURI.

Company Brand

Product Brand

Branding is a very important aspect when you want to keep your business or company in play. When you have many competitors, establishing your brand is a powerful strategy that helps your business stay in the lead and leaves your competitors in the dust.

However, many people still feel confused and frustrated, and end up giving up on building their own business brand. On the one hand, even though some of them spend a lot of time and money on branding, they still can’t boost their business image significantly. On the other hand, you can find many businesses that don’t care at all about branding and because of this, they will slowly but surely fade away from the market.

There are 5 basic ways of building your business brand:

1. Know what your business is about

First and foremost, you should discover the idea on which to build the foundation of your brand. You have to know the vision, mission and value of your business, as well as the product you want to deliver. You should ensure that your product is useful and needed.

Sometimes, you should put yourself in your customer’s shoes. That way, you can understand what the customer wants, what his reasons for using your products are, and how to make him comfortable and satisfied.

The purpose of your business is not only restricted to what you sell or what you provide, it also refers to the impact that your products have on the customers.

For example, Airbnb’s vision is not only that of connecting people looking to rent homes with those who are looking for accommodations, but also of transforming the world into “A world where home can be everywhere”. Their mission proves their commitment to provide value beyond the requirements of the providing service.

2. Introduce your brand

You can consider launching your brand as an ideal opportunity to publish your new brand, with the condition of creating an interesting story around it. Great publicity is important to make a good first impression, and to attract customers to your business.

Showing your brand product to the public, is better than waiting for new customers to come to you. You can participate in the company’s exhibitions, or present your product in schools or malls. Moreover, you can hold your own show on the road. It’s all about direct publicity.

You should also take advantage of technology, of social medias like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or instant messaging apps like WeChat, Whatapps, Blackberry Messenger or Line. Nowadays, this method is becoming a powerful way (and at no additional cost) of spreading publicity, due to its quick way of sending information and of communicating.

We're on social medias for a couple of years now. Checkout our FB page at facebook.com/pastinyala or just search for #pastinyala

However, if you want to create a more intimate rapport with your customer, you can send broadcasting promotions or offer referral credits though your marketing and sales email. If your customer is happy with your product and work, he is going to promote your service.

3. Show your consistency

Every company has a brand, regardless of whether or not they see it as a priority. You must remember that your brand is a reflection of yourself and of your company, and that it is what people see first. For some companies, branding is a strategy to keep their customers loyal and to catch other potential customers.

Consistency of branding refers to how much people get to know your business through your identity and message. You should think of brand consistency as an evolution. Branding consistency is not only restricted to putting your logo mark on all your business products. Every company has to create some standard guidelines related to branding. Message Consistency clearly defines your positioning and aligns it with your core behaviors.

If your actions are aligned with your message, then customers will begin trusting your services. By using brand elements thoughtfully and strategically, you will build visibility and increase customer recognition and association. The guidelines map out how your logo, fonts, colors, tagline, etc. will be used. Your logo has to be simple and easy to follow, or it won’t have the intended impact.

4. Keep it alive

You cannot keep you brand alive just by improving it yourself. You can’t control it completely, but you can manipulate it by listening and responding to customers’ needs. That means engaging customers either in person, over the phone, in writing, or virtually, according to the way they prefer to receive information.

Do not forget that branding is an evolutionary process, and you can evolve mostly through the feedback you receive from other parties.

5. Measure your brand

You can measure your brand through brand positioning or benchmarking, which can be done through any software. Fundamentally, measuring is about metrics and metrics explain what people know about your business and how they engage it, taking into account the fact that it is backed by your brand.

One of the questions which can be answered if you can measure your branding strategy is: “What’s the return on investment for these branding efforts?”. You can measure by analyzing website visits, social media page likes, or even by finding out which e-mail content drives the most forwards and reconversions, and to what segment of your list that content goes.

That's  what I shared with my Business Development Unit. You need to measure some metrics to gauge your marketing effort or branding effort. The metrics will be the performance benchmark to help you improve your strategy.

This way you can better align future e-mail campaigns with other content that elevates your brand. What is more, you can analyze by comparing your brand with the brands of other competitors, competitors who are, or could become your toughest enemies.

Lastly, an example of a great brand.

COLA-COLA is a great brand, an expensive brand. In 2010, Coca-Cola spent $2.9 billion on advertising. By 2013, with a budget of $3.3 billion, their CEO began laying plans to increase that amount to $4.3 billion by 2016.

Mobile Apps Download Trend

It has become a fact that Mobile Devices have changed the way we consume Media. Just a few years back, Television was our main channel to consume media followed by Newspapers, magazines and Radio. However, with smartphones and tablets on the rise, consumers have quickly shifted their preferences thanks to portability, ease of use, coverage and rich media availability.

Juniper Research’s report had predicted in the “Future App Store: Discovery, Monetization & Ecosystem Analysis 2013-2018,” report that gaming will fuel a sharp hike in app downloads – in 2017, over 160 billion apps will be downloaded globally onto consumer handsets and tablets.

 Meanwhile, the trends observed on the InMobi network are in tandem with this prediction, with games as a category representing a strong 64% of the total apps downloaded through their network. Communication apps were a far 11.3% and telecom 6.8%.

Mobile Apps Download. Image: InMobi

What do consumers do on Mobile?

Mobile Apps for work and play

As far the segregation of media activities go, Social Media and Entertainment (21 percent each) are consumed the most followed by playing games (15 percent). Email comprises of 12 percent media consumption time followed by shopping (9 percent) and local search (8 percent).

Emerging market?

China is the new US. According to IDC, in February 2013, China overtook the US to become the world’s largest smart device market, with 246 million devices (against the US 230 million) and accounted for 26.5% of all smartphone shipments last year.

The total app downloads, including only Google Play Store and Apple App Store, grew 15% in 2016 over 2015. The number of apps downloaded in 2016 stood at about 91 billion, with Google Play Store capturing about 70% of the share. The same number for 2015 was around 79 billion. Expect more rises in the figures for 2017 and beyond.


Mobil Apps Development

If you're planning on developing a new Mobile Apps, Games Apps have a huge market but it's very competitive, Games Apps come and go.Only blockbuster games really pay off. Business Apps offers smaller market but revenue gain would be more stable.

Mobile Apps for Communication is very stable and there are existing core players. Unless you intend to disrupt their business model, it's a safe bet to focus on other category.

Are you embarking on a new Mobil Apps Development? Here are some key questions for your considerations:

1. What are the leading app stores globally in terms of revenues?
2. Which categories see the highest number of app downloads?
3. In terms of revenue opportunity, which monetisation performs best: In-app or PPD (Pay per Download)?
4. What impact have connected TV devices had on app downloads?
5. Where does the monetisation opportunity lie?

Betting Robot

Can't trust your instinct in betting or stock market gambling?  There's a robot that may help. CNN published an article on  Robot making money off Trump's tweets.

Austin-based marketing company T3 has created a robot -- dubbed the "Trump and Dump" -- that analyzes Trump's Twitter feed. Every time the president sends a negative tweet about a publicly traded company, the bot automatically short sells that company's stock, which means the bot essentially places a bet that the company's stock price will go down. And they've been making money doing it, says T3 President Ben Gaddis. The proceeds are then donated to the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

This "bot" is actually a software that automatically collect data (in this example, selected tweets), analyse it based on given set of rules and come out it a prediction. 

In this case, it's the stock market rules, whereby , a negative sentiment has a negative impact. Such is the perception. When a negative tweet goes out and has a negative impact on that company's stock, something positive comes out of it. 

Gaddis said his company isn't yet revealing how much money they've made, but he said so far four tweets have triggered the bot to short sell since it was launched in early January. They've made "excellent" returns on three of them.

Trump and Dump. Image: CNN

For example, when Trump tweeted about Delta's computer outage on Monday, the Trump and Dump bot was "all over it," Gaddis said, adding they saw a 4.47% return on investment.

Trump negative tweet

It might seem odd for a marketing firm to take on robotic short selling based on Trump's tweets, but Gaddis said T3 was perfectly poised to get the Trump and Dump bot up and running.

T3 says it develops social strategy for some major companies, such as Capital One and UPS. Part of what T3 does is build algorithms that can determine whether a tweet is saying something positive or negative about a company.

"All we had to do is take that knowledge and translate it into a trading platform," Gaddis said. He said after the idea was born, it took a T3 engineer two and a half days to get the bot up and running.

After this Trump and Dump betting bot, I'm sure there will be some tech-firm developing other bet bot to listen to other global leaders media comment and predict the market outcome.

Najib dan Jual, anyone?

Innovating Fireworks With Drones Show

Move over fireworks, make way for the buzzing drones.

Intel developed the idea of using drones, something commonly associated with weapons, warfare and aerial photography for hobbyists, into something used for art and beauty.This project called Intel Drone 100, was a choreographed Drone Light Show whereby 100 drones were launched into the air into a pre-programmed position with coordinated lighting to display different patterns and colours.

Intel logo made by drones

It's only one part of the future of this technology, however, with Intel highlighting potential uses for drones ranging from bushfire management to delivery of medical supplies to infrastructure repair.

On October 2016, Intel flew a synchronized fleet of 500 Shooting Star drones in Germany, which won a Guinness World Record title for the Most Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) airborne simultaneously.

Drone 3D show

November 2016 marked the first time in the U.S. that Intel Shooting Star 300 drones simultaneously perform a synchronized light show in Disneyland. Many believed that this was a trial runs. The flying robots paint the sky with colorful images choreographed to traditional holiday music.

Drones flying formation. 

In February 2017, Intel Shooting Star 300 drones were the backup dancers for Lady Gaga during the Super Bowl half-time show, choreographed a waving American flag, turning into Pepsi’s logo. The drones were built solely with this type of extravaganza in mind.

Building Drones dancers

They're built, according to Intel, "with a soft frame made of flexible plastics and foam and contain no screws.". What they lack in screws, Shooting Stars make up for in LED lights, which are built in and " can create over 4 billion color combinations in the sky." All 300 drones are controlled through a single central computer and operator. This lightness and flexibility comes with trade-offs: a Shooting Star can only withstand wind speeds of 10 m/s, which would cause a small tree to sway.

Intel Powered Drone

Risk of Dancing Drones

Federal Aviation Administration, which regulates drones, only allow them to fly up to 700 feet and in more restrictive airspace, such as above a lake or empty field. I think the FAA is worried that the drones may get haywire and just crashed to the ground. As if the explosive fireworks is of any safer.

Innovation

No doubt, fireworks display is impressive and with a bang. It does have its disadvantages, dangerous and costly. Whereas drone are reusable and re-programmable. The innovation part here is the limitless possibility of displays and patterns. Maybe someone will add sound effect in the near future.

This technology will lead to other innovation spin-off, such as a floating billboard, in 3D. Or used a warning display in an emergency. Or a 3D floating beacon. Or swarming drones conducting simultaneous aerial scanning, sensing or low-altitude mapping.

And if China catch this idea, they'll probably use the swarm drones to blow away the polluted smog that engulf their populated cities.

Future of Drone Show

Intel envisions a future where drones fly in fleets to accomplish tasks. The same software that Intel and Disney are using to put on a colorful aerial show could be used in search and rescue operations or inspecting equipment and goods. Imagine a squadron of several drones using scanning software — like Intel’s RealSense platform — to inspect an airplane, water tower or farm land. Or a swarm of these drones creating a floating LED screen. But right now the drones are simply flying backup dancers or aerial ballet if you want to call it.

Intel's 500 Drone Light Show
Shooting Star Drones video

Quality Policy must be observed at all time

If you run a query on Google for the keyword Quality Policy, it will return 131,000,000 results and counting whilst running a query on Quality, you'll get 3,880,000,000 results.  

In quality management system, a quality policy is a document developed by management to express the directive of the top management with respect to quality. ... Section 5.1 of the ISO 9001:2015 standard requires a written, well defined quality policy that is communicated and understood within an organization.

Quality itself is further explain below:

qual·i·ty

ˈkwälədē/

noun

1. 1.

   the standard of something as measured against other things of a similar kind; the degree of excellence of something. 

   synonyms:

   standard, grade, class, caliber, condition, character, nature, form, rank, value, level;

   • 
     

     
     
     

     
     
   • 
     

     
     
     
   • 
     

     
     
     
2. 2.

   a distinctive attribute or characteristic possessed by someone or something. 

   synonyms:

   feature, trait, attribute, characteristic, point, aspect, facet, side, property

Despite having a Quality Policy for Pasti Nyala, we do occasionally have non-compliance issues such as staff delivering below quality standard of work. I'll called it school-project work because as working adults they are obliged to do better than that.

Although quality sometimes might be considered a subjective concept, Pasti Nyala promotes objectively monitoring, reviewing, and reporting on quality, as defined by the values of an organization and the needs of its stakeholders.

Quality Policy being a directive won't help if review and enforcement is not in place or practiced. Frequent review on staff work is necessary to ensure Quality Policy are observed and quality targets are met.

Staffs need to be constantly reminded on the importance of Quality Policy as the targets set within are used as benchmarks to maintain our standard and form. We won't have issues if staffs are all competent but as much as we want, in the real working world, no staff are equal and those that failed to comply to the Quality Policy need to be prompted to improve.

Consequences of Quality Policy being ignored:
1. Sloppy works lead to complaints from end-user,
2. Un-necessary rework to re-fix the problem, which lead to more delay,
3. Low quality give poor impression to company deliverable and competency of workforce,
4. Lower trust toward poor quality products or services

Why a Quality Policy is required:
1. An agreed bench mark to maintain or even further improve work excellence,
2. To nurture staff working attribute toward world-class standard,
3. Quality guaranteed better value

Path to Quality

We use the following descriptors of the various levels in assessing the Pasti Nyala's current level and the target level for quality capability. At this time, Pasti Nyala is categorized under LEVEL TWO - EMERGING, we still have a long way to go.

LEVEL ONE - Beginning
To begin on the Path to Quality, the staffs, the Board, and senior management must commit to moving towards conformance with the Standards and identifying and managing the company's risks. A first step is to begin
to develop a Quality Assurance and Improvement Program.

Pasti Nyala initiated this by creating a Quality Policy for her workforce.

LEVEL TWO - EMERGING
A LEVEL-TWO company has achieved partial conformance with the Standards on its Path to Quality. At this level of quality capability the company has begun to implement a Quality Assurance and Improvement Program with ongoing monitoring and periodic self-assessments and an external assessment.

Begin working toward earning appropriate professional certifications. Pasti Nyala was awarded with an MSC Status in 2016, our first professional certification. We are also working on getting more certification in other areas.

LEVEL THREE - CONFORMING
A LEVEL-THREE company "Generally Conforms" to the Standards and this degree of conformance has been substantiated through its Quality Assurance and Improvement Program and by an external assessment or self-assessment
with independent validation.

In order for an internal audit activity to represent that it complies with the Standards, it must undergo an external assessment at least once every five years.

Work on obtaining an appropriate mix of professional designations (such as Quality Assurance Manager, Internal Audit Manager) that demonstrate your activity's professionalism and competency.

LEVEL FOUR - LEVERAGING
A LEVEL-FOUR company places a high level of emphasis on implementing best practices in conforming to the Standards.

An external review team is the approach utilized for its external assessment and emphasis is focused on identifying and implementing best practices.

Effective risk management of the company's risk profile demonstrates to senior management and the board that company can be effective in providing assurance and consulting services to the organization.


LEVEL FIVE - LEADING
A LEVEL-FIVE is an innovator of best practices which support continuous improvement across the organization and industry and in the organization's communities. At this level of quality capability, the company and his or her team are considered strategic partners with senior management.

Serve on external QA teams, or participate in peer reviews.

Source: The Path to Quality, https://na.theiia.org/services/quality/Public_Documents/Path%20to%20Quality.pdf


RWS

Hello world

Hello netizens.

This blog will be used by us as Pasti Nyala to deliver updates and knowledge based articles related to our line of work.

Happy reading.

RWS