In the early 1990's, KL Poh quit his highly-paid senior management job to address what he saw as a need in the Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) market. Also known as Online Transaction Processsing (OLTP) systems, the systems then were closed, proprietary affairs. One of the biggest downsides to using these systems was the prohibitive cost of upgrading or replacing any part of the system.
Poh saw a future in UNIX-based open systems, a concept that was just appearing on the IT landscape. Using Unix as a backbone for building applications and tools, the new approach towards ERP promised substantial cost savings, without locking users into any particular brand of hardware. With this ambition, Poh founded Summit Solutions Pte Ltd. He teamed up with Canadian company VARNET to provide open-system OLTP solutions and met with immediate success, chalking up over 60 installations in Singapore, Malaysia, Brunei, Indonesia and Sri Lanka. Looking back, Poh is pleased with his judgement call. "The timing was just right," he said. "We managed to get in early and stay ahead of the curve."
By the mid-90's, that growth curve started to flatten out with competition from the MNCs like SAP entering the market. The prospects for mid-tier solution providers, like Summit Solutions, was starting to dim with installations reaching near saturation point. After doing his research, he decided to switch his business focus to develop solutions based on the emerging Online Analytical Processing (OLAP) technologies.
While OLTP helps streamline business processes for greater efficiency, OLAP takes the copious amount of data generated by OLTP systems and analyses them to help managers make better decisions. "If OLTP systems go down, operations may come to a halt for a few hours while the problem is being fixed," said Poh. "But if you don't have OLAP in place and keep making poor business decisions based on 'gut feel', the company is doomed for failure."
Unfortunately, the benefits of OLAP systems are not always apparent to Summit's potential customers. "To sell my solutions, I have to help my customers project into the future," said Poh. "For operations of a certain size - typically with 10 or more decision makers - the need for business decision systems becomes critical to the long-term growth of the company."
Sybase offered a unique database product called Sybase IQ that is optimised for heavy-duty analytical processing, just what Poh needed to create fast-performing OLAP solutions. Sybase teamed up with Summit Solutions in late 2005 under the Infocomm Local Industry Upgrading Programme (iLIUP) by the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA).
Even though the partnership is in its early days, it has already provided Summit with joint market development opportunities, free training and even free professional telemarketing to find new business leads and opportunities. In fact, the partnership helped Summit win a new customer in Indonesia, PermataBank, a medium sized bank that is part of Standard Chartered Bank Group.
Poh has some advice for entrepreneurs. "Being an entrepreneur is a path that requires passion, vision and determination. Be prudent in your decisions, especially with finances; you can't afford to be extravagant. Before taking the leap, get some expertise in the area of business you're going into. You should choose entrepreneurship as a first choice, not a last resort. Only then will you really succeed."