SUCCESS STORIES

 

Holistic Healing and Medical Wellness: A Medical Network’s Mission to Improve Patient’s Well-being – SME Centre@SICCI

Crystal Chan

(Photo) Founding Director of Precision First Pte. Ltd. (previously known as Precision Urology Pte. Ltd.), Dr Chong KT (in stripe sweater), who is also the founding Director of Surgi-TEN Specialists Pte. Ltd. and Asia MD Pte. Ltd., holding an appreciation gift with Professor Dr Bannakij Lojanapiwat (in the blue blazer), Dean of the Faculty of Medicine (Chiang Mai University, Thailand) for their future collaborations.

A Mission to Improve Patients’ Well-Being

Precision First Pte. Ltd. (previously known as Precision Urology Pte. Ltd.) is a healthcare consulting company based in Singapore that aims to build up a network that connects medical and healthcare professionals, healthcare services, and the public community to patients.

Precision First understands that many patients are concerned about the expensive medical bills needed for post-treatment rehabilitation and recovery, especially after spending quite a sum on hospital treatments and surgery.

Therefore, Precision First came up with plans to expand into overseas locations so that more patients can enjoy medical wellness programmes that are both reliable and inexpensive. The programme’s objective is to allow patients to improve their well-being through holistic healing and mental wellness after medical treatments.

The Uncertain Road Ahead

In the beginning, Precision First was uncertain about their business direction or even the various assistance they are eligible for in their overseas expansion plans. They were troubled about the obstacles and limitations of their market penetration strategies.

However, that changed when Precision First’s founder, Dr Chong KT was referred by an associate to SME Centre@SICCI‘s Senior Business Advisor, Mr Mike Krishnan.

After Dr Chong had a thorough discussion with Mike, the company was encouraged by Mike’s feedback and viewpoint on the overseas expansion of clinical services. Precision First was pleased with Mike’s excellent in-depth knowledge and vital business acumen that provided the company with confidence in their first overseas venture.

Reflecting on the positive ethos of the SME Centre, Mike was also outstanding in highlighting key strengths and weaknesses of the company’s internationalisation toolkit that seeks to support its regional expansion and market penetration plans.

Successful Grant Application and Venture into Overseas Markets

With Mike’s assistance, Precision First submitted an application for the Market Readiness Assistance (MRA) grant to Enterprise Singapore in preparation for their overseas expansion into Thailand market.

In March 2023, Precision First’s MRA grant was approved and they launched their medical wellness programme in Thailand called “Doctor Heals”.

“Doctor Heals” is an initiative conducted in collaboration with selected surgeons, medical specialists and medical doctors in Thailand. It hopes to improve holistic recovery for patients who have undergone medical treatments.

With the help of the MRA grant, Precision First’s goal of helping more patients from Southeast Asian countries became more concrete.

Being an SME, Precision First noted that overseas expansion plans are difficult without the confidence and knowledge provided by Enterprise Singapore and SME Centres. The support rendered enabled them to further their reach overseas, which could have been hindered tremendously by the high level of costs.

Positive Outlook for the Future

With positive re-enforcement and guidance from Enterprise, another of Precision First’s work partners, Asia MD Pte. Ltd. is also planning for expansion into the Chinese market.

Looking back, if the challenges and concerns were left unresolved, Precision First would have delayed their plans and missed plenty of opportunities that were available. The company was very happy to have Mike’s assistance in this and to have received the approval for their MRA grant.

Precision First hoped that more companies could benefit from the experience and encouragement of Enterprise Singapore and SME Centres.

About Surgi-TEN Specialists and Asia MD

Besides Precision First, Dr Chong KT is also managing two other healthcare companies. One of them is Surgi-TEN Specialists Pte. Ltd., a one-stop surgical clinic in Singapore that employs specialists from more than 10 sub-specialities. The surgeons’ expertise ranges from brain surgery, orthopaedics, plastic surgery, gynaecology, stomach, colorectal and urology.

The other is Asia MD Pte. Ltd. Asia MD works closely with medical doctors and healthcare professionals to provide reliable healthcare information and articles written or approved by medical professionals in order to combat fake medical news. Followers of Asia MD’s social media receive regular updates on new healthcare articles, gain opportunities to ask questions with the complimentary “Ask-A-Doctor” service and obtain information on how to keep away from avoidable medical errors in hospitals and medical clinics. Both English and Mandarin translations are available on the website.

From Manual to Automation: How a Household and Lifestyle Brand Revolutionised Their Business ProcessSME Centre@SICCI

Crystal Chan

In the past, it took more than eight hours per day to clear the backlog of sales fulfillment. Now, the company only takes less than one to two hours to do so, immensely improving the productivity cycle.

A Leading Household and Lifestyle Brand

Sheldon Global was founded in 2014 in Singapore with a core business in retail and e-commerce sale of household and lifestyle products. The company has a broad portfolio encompassing home and lifestyle products with six major house brands under its belt; each with a different product focus.

With a vision of venturing into markets beyond Singapore, Sheldon Global came up with various strategic regional and global expansion projects in 2022. The intention of the projects was to expand its reach towards Singapore’s Southeast Asian neighbours: Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam. Afterwards, it planned to extend its network towards the U.S., the UK and other parts of Europe.

Despite its great aspirations, Sheldon Global has a critical issue it needed to resolve before it can continue with its expansion schemes.

Tedious Manual Process and Manpower Crunch

As one of the leading household and tableware companies in Singapore, Sheldon Global faces hundreds and thousands of orders daily. As the business expands, the manual process of order fulfilment was getting more difficult for the staff to complete.

It slowly culminates to the point where the orders cannot be fulfilled within a day. Issues such as the staff possibly being overworked and overwhelmed due to manpower crunch are areas that may impede the business growth as well.

Therefore, it is imperative that Sheldon Global’s sales orders are fulfilled quickly and efficiently to lock in sales in order to compete with their competitors who rival them in both online and offline platforms.

Consultation with SME Centre@SICCI

Sheldon Global first came into contact with SME Centre@SICCI in August 2020 when they were enquiring about the Productivity Solutions Grant (PSG) for strategising their warehouse operations.

Our centre’s Partners for Business Growth (PBG) Programme Team Lead and business advisor, Mr Aaron Wan first went through a consultation with Sheldon Global’s Managing Director, Mr Brien and assisted the company with their PSG application.

Throughout the period of working together, Aaron developed a close business relationship with Sheldon Global. He discovered that Mr Brien’s vision for the company didn’t just stop with improving work performance and efficiency in the field but he was also actively looking for ways to lead the company forward in the industry.

Thus, Aaron introduced the PBG Programme to Mr Brien after considering their needs and future plans.

Partners for Business Growth

The PBG Programme provided an in-depth consultancy for Sheldon Global by examining its key business problem statement. Due to this in-depth consultancy, Aaron was able to discover the dire need for automation in the company’s order process.

Mr Brien was later introduced by Aaron to Republic Polytechnic’s Robotic Process Automation Programme (RPA), where it assisted with the enhancement of Sheldon Global’s staff capabilities and resolved the issue of manual order processing.

In the past, it took more than eight hours per day to clear the backlog of sales fulfilment. Now, the company only takes less than one to two hours to do so, immensely improving the productivity cycle.

Sheldon Global implores other SMEs to get in touch with SME Centre@SICCI and learn more about the PBG Programme that can potentially help them build on existing capabilities and grow beyond Singapore’s shores.