Driving digitalisation: Going beyond the 2nd gear

Estimated reading time: 4 minutes

There is a term that the technology industry uses, called leapfrogging. When an organisation successfully applies technology to progress faster than their competitors, they are known to have leapfrogged ahead.

But rather than having the ‘frog’ in their brand name, tech consultancy company TechRarebit has opted to use the ‘rabbit’ animal, albeit spelt differently.

Co-founder Nicky Lim explained, “The whole concept around using ‘rarebit’ is because we want to help businesses digitalise. People often mistake us for a digital marketing agency. To be honest, I did not leave an agency, to go back to the agency life!”

Instead, what Nicky and his co-founder Rizal Azis aspire is for Techrarebit to specialise in helping organisations make smart and effective business decisions when moving from traditional to online marketing platforms.

Both founders also bring a unique combination of business and technology expertise and experience to the table. During their five-month journey so far, they have successfully applied this expertise and experience to help at least two clients achieve targeted business outcomes.

Data-driven business outcomes

Driving sales

Nicky explained, “To be completely open, we weren’t using anything too fancy or customised, opting to keep things simple and straightforward. We wanted to minimise time wasted on the onboarding process and channel most of the time and energy towards operations and execution.”

He shared that they worked a lot with data, and then tying the information gathered from analytics back to basic business and marketing fundamentals.

Rizal chipped in, “The key thing is when we meet a client, the real driver to any business is the bottom line, and how much money do you want to make.”

With former F1 driver Alex Yoong, that meant selling a lot of e-tickets for his e-racing series. Nicky explained, “For Alex’s business, we built a platform that allowed participants around the world to buy tickets seamlessly to participate in the e-racing series.

“This included transacting in different currencies.”

Once that was done, Alex could not only sell tickets, but also track where most of his participants were coming from and make strategic decisions to optimise his marketing strategies.

Creating new demand

For a second client, a perfume brand this time, the business had identified they had to change their brand target audience from tourists to locals. Techrarebit proceeded to execute and establish the following for this perfume brand:

• strong social media presence
• correct branding on various websites
• marketing tools and initiatives to track audience
• manage upcoming work focused on driving visitors towards their Shopee and Lazada stores

Nicky added, “Because it was a small team, we were able to also establish a process to optimise overall business operations.” The outcome was seamless processes and maximum impact.

Same industry, whole different animal

According to Rizal, many businesses think digitalisation is just about websites and social media. “The reality is (it’s not just external), it’s a whole internal structural change, and we go on that (change) journey with our clients.

“I don’t think anyone else out there does an in-depth analysis of a client before they engage. We do. We research their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats, their financial position and their competitors. We even have an analysis of their competitors!” Rizal pointed out.

Techrarebit’s Rizal intends to make enterprise-level management consulting advisory, accessible to SMEs as well.

So, the key is that Techrarebit looks at a business from an overall perspective. Rizal added, “We try to be as holistic as possible, because for me that is how you drive change in a business.”

Whoever says real change comes from within, would not be inaccurate. And Techrarebit’s Rizal intends to make enterprise-level management consulting advisory, accessible to SMEs as well.

As within, so without

Technology also has a role to play in helping enable that change or impact to achieve targeted business outcomes.

From years of experience, Nicky observed technology is making tools cheaper and more accessible. “But they still require humans to implement technology. And what we (aim to) do is empower people, not create dependency.”

Both these gentlemen recognise that digitalisation is one part of SMEs adapting to change.

And Techrarebit will recommend the strategic business change that jives with the business’s overall mission.

In conclusion, Rizal said, “If you have done your unique business plans, you must also do your digitalisation plans.”