Greed & Incompetence At CCM

There once was a company called Companies Commission of Malaysia, its a monopoly. You want to do a search on a company, usually private companies, you have to go to CCM.

Well, no one will allow such a monopoly to go to waste. In 2006, an obscure company called Rafflesia Communications Sdn Bhd, was given CCM by the Domestic and Consumer Affairs Ministry - why it wasn't open up for bidding I don't want to even guess.

The company's principal shareholders:
Datuk Md Affendi Hamdan
Datuk Wira IskandarDzakurnain Badaruddin (former EPU director general)
The company's directors are the two connected guys plus James Chun Sing Cheuk, Khoo Beng Chit and Khair Mahfar.

Well, they decided to close the counter services and do everything via the internet. Only problem, the system and database are nowhere near ready. Its greed and incompetence. They had two years to try and understand the business. It used to be RM10 per company search, and now with an internet service, it will be $15. Hmmm, obviously going online did not save costs, what is the business model like? You close the counters to save on labour and resources right, the cost savings are supposed to bring about lower cost to consumers - in the words of a wise man, wtf???

If you guys even sit down and try to understand the business, its quite a simple business, its a monopoly, but you need to understand the database. Not all companies data are on any database, a lot of the search are still done manually. More importantly, you all did not appreciate how things were done.

My god, its a scanning process only, even if you create automatic links for easy tabulation and search: company name, company number, names of directors, IC numbers of directors, paid up, most recent turnover... just creating these 6 fields will allow everyone to search according to:
a) a person's linkages to all private companies
b) ranking of private companies according to latest revenue, e.g. if you want to find out companies with revenues more than RM20m a year
It is so simple to improve the search, and these value added searches, you can charge more money... sigh...

All law firms know that you do not just pay RM10 per search, you pay RM12. The extra RM2 goes into a well organised system where there are ready runners at these counters that will have a jump on queue on all requests for the day. The RM2 is shared with the couriers and the staff behind the counters as well. Its a well oiled system. You want to do it yourself, yes, you will only pay RM10 but you risk waiting for a long time for your printout. Now, you are dismantling this structure, and you expect all your staff to work with you??!! Basic managerial skills not evident, basic people skills also not evident.

Then you launch something that is nowhere near ready, not even beta level. You guys seem to have little understanding on how to launch an online system to replace your bricks and mortar business. There must be solid test runs prior to launching. Its like you guys have no business running a business. I am sure there are many who can run this well and profitably, and get the staff to be 100% behind this company, and charge less than RM10 per search. Its not even rocket science. Now its so bad, people come in with a request for 20 companies may be lucky to get half of that done. Its soooo bad.

Want to latch onto a goldmine also must be able to have some street smarts la... if have connections but don't really want to work, go to Pharmaniaga and supply generic medicine to them. You buy from Indian generic producers at say RM10, sell to Pharama at RM30 and Pharma will sell to government hospitals for RM45... you don't even need to keep inventory, just ask the producer to ship straight to Pharma and pocket the difference. Get projects commensurate to the amount of work you are willing to put in, go and get these kind of simpler projects la.

Now, can I get CTOS to be given to me. I promise to get the data up to date with only a 48 hour delay, and cut prices by 30%. Gee, who do I know....

p/s photos: Yuri Ebihara