THE constant striving for business quality and people excellence is yielding dividends for ornamental fish service provider Qian Hu Corporation. The Singapore-listed firm has not only boosted its earnings and market share over the years, it also made a splash in this year's Business Excellence Awards.
Qian Hu clinched the Singapore Quality Award (SQA) and the People Excellence Award, which are part of Spring Singapore's excellence initiatives.
'I guess the unity of Qian Hu family members, clear direction and vision, commitment of all of my top executives, plus a strong corporate culture and values helped us to score high marks,' says group executive chairman Kenny Yap, fondly known as 'Kenny the Fish'.
'We are also B.A.D,' says Mr Yap, an acronym that stands for Belief in the Singapore Quality Class framework; having the right Attitude, which is to adopt the framework rather than just win an award; and Discipline to pursue business excellence on a daily basis.
The group, which has a presence in Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and China, has played a key role in establishing Singapore as a major exporter of ornamental fish.
When it comes to ensuring quality, it is all about being disciplined and consistent in shipping fish and products that meet the expected standards, Mr Yap says.
The company currently exports over 500 varieties of ornamental fish to more than 65 countries, and distributes more than 5,000 types of aquarium and pet accessories to local retailers and wholesalers in Asia.
In its drive for higher service quality, the group has come up with some innovative initiatives. For instance, it developed the first semi-automated system for packing ornamental fish in a temperature- and humidity-controlled room to improve their survival rate. It also introduced barcoding to cut down on human error. And its sales transactions and inventory control are tracked via PDAs for greater speed and accuracy.
The group is also harnessing DNA technology to produce better quality dragon fish through investing in the study of dragon fish genome to better control breeding behaviour.
For greater operational efficiency, it monitors the death rate of fish as well as the breeding process, the company says. This has helped reduce daily losses of fish stock and death on arrival of fish exports to meet international benchmarks. And this has doubled productivity over the last four years.
These initiatives can be seen in the bottom line. Sales rose by more than 40 per cent from 2004 to 2008 while net profit grew at a compounded annual rate of 38 per cent. Market share also expanded 15 per cent domestically and 45 per cent overseas in the last five years.
'Among the awards we've received over the years, I treasure the SQA the most as it is not about me, Kenny Yap, but rather about the Qian Hu family members' capability and ability to pursue business excellence and continuously improve on that,' Mr Yap says.
'I have openly told my shareholders that I will take care of our people first because they are the ones who are going to add value to their stakes,' he adds.
This commitment to its employees is demonstrated in the group's 'people first' culture, which seeks to integrate everyone into the extended Qian Hu family.
Mr Yap says the group believes in fostering an environment where its staff are happy and proud of what they do. Qian Hu conducts an annual employee satisfaction survey, which showed 90 per cent of its staff giving a satisfaction rating that is average and above. The mean score improved from 3.46 in 2005 to 3.67 in 2008, on a scale of 1 to 5.
Training is also a priority. With a training budget pegged at 2.1 per cent of payroll, each employee spends about 67 hours in training and all of the planned training places were utilised in 2008.
Besides on-the-job training, staff are also coached on workplace safety, supervision, creativity, problem-solving and language enhancement during the year.
'Because they are part of the family, it is our duty to make sure that when they exit Qian Hu, they will be better people financially and, hopefully, with greater humanity,' Mr Yap says. 'So we need to train them, be fair to them, create a working environment that values teamwork and despises politicking, celebrate together when we have achieved something, and create a lean corporate reporting structure so that communication channels are accessible.'
Given its people-first motto, it is not surprising that Qian Hu scored well in the People Excellence category of the Business Excellence Awards.
But as an employer, Mr Yap remains pragmatic about the outcome of these initiatives. Employees themselves need to understand how to balance work and other aspects of their lives, such as spending time with family and friends, he says.
'If they cannot define for themselves what is meaningful, I can give them all the time they need, their life will still not be balanced,' he points out.
Qian Hu has been on a winning streak when it comes to awards. Since 2003, it has won the Most Transparent Company award every year. Last year, it was also the first small cap company to win the Best Managed Board award at the Singapore Corporate Awards.
This year, it again scooped up four awards in the Singapore Corporate Awards under the small caps category - Best Managed Board, Chief Financial Officer of the Year, Best Investor Relations, and Best Annual Report.