Proposals to help elevate business and technology skills to improve socio-economic development in emerging economy of Kuching
Petaling Jaya, 10 October 2012 – Last Thursday, IBM announced that a team of 12 participants have concluded the seventh Corporate Service Corp (CSC) corporate citizenship activity in Malaysia, and the first in Kuching, Sarawak. Three organisations in the state capital – the Sarawak State Library, Sarawak Cultural Village and Universiti Malaysia Sarawak – benefitted from the IBM expertise on the ground.
The IBM team, which arrived in Kuching in early September, worked on three projects aimed to provide a roadmap to create business opportunities in the education sector.
Working with the Sarawak State Library, IBM’s team delivered a growth plan and training programme to help improve the records repository, data collection and operational procedures for the organisation.
The CSC team surveyed, assessed and identified ways to improve the library’s services, preservation of its collections and operational procedures, helping to identify ways to improve data storage, retrieval, while retaining accuracy as well as improving coordination between the different sections of the library.
“With growing use of technology across the world, it has become even more critical to enhance our organisation’s ability to store and disseminate information in order to ensure our records remain accessible,” said Japri Bujang Masli, acting chief executive of the Sarawak State Library.
“The IBM team’s recommendations will help us streamline that effort and enhance our contribution to the emerging economy of the region,” said Mr Japri.
The team also helped develop marketing programmes to increase public awareness of the importance and potential of information services for the library, which is the largest in the Sarawak region. In addition, they trained and advised the staff on skills assessment process and implementation of the Occupational Health and Safety Management System (OHSMS).
The IBM team also worked with the Universiti Malaysia Sarawak (UNIMAS) to develop strategies for the commercialisation of its research work.
The CSC team worked with the Centre for Technology Transfer and Consultancy (CTTC) team at the university to establish a business model structure to successfully commercialise its intellectual property (IP). They identified key barriers to success, defined engagement objectives, crafted a marketing analysis plan, and developed a method for CTTC to evaluate commercialisation readiness and prioritise potential IP.
The volunteers also helped to develop an e-commerce and awareness plan for the Penan community in Long Lamai, Sarawak, under the university’s Knowledge Transfer Programme. They analysed the current prototype design for the Long Lamai Social eCommerce website, provided recommendations for the design, payment processing systems, scalable security, search engine optimisation and website promotion. The team also assisted in the creation of a formal testing strategy as well as recommended ways to improve the training approach with an emphasis on motivating the communities to learn new technologies.
In addition, the team studied and evaluated the existing standard operating procedures and coordination of each of the different departments of the Sarawak Cultural Village.
The CSC team proposed areas for improvement such as the Go Green initiative, and the Effective and Efficient Eco-friendly systems. The recommendations were aimed at minimising the amount of manual transactions in order to reduce paper consumption, introducing initiatives and technology to bring in eco-friendly environment systems to improve energy and environmental performance, and designing the governance and measurement framework to manage and control processes.
Benefits of the IBM Corporate Service Corps Programme
“The IBM Corporate Service Corps programme combines the tenets of transformational leadership, values-based culture and a global mindset – elements that organisations need to develop and instil in their employees as they aspire to be successful global players,” said Eric Wong, IBM Malaysia's Marketing Director.
“It serves to benefit all parties involved – the IBM participants, community and the IBM organisation. Participants benefit via a once-in-a-lifetime, problem-solving exercise in the developing world. Communities gain by obtaining hundreds of thousands of dollars in pro bono expert consulting services; and IBM benefits by growing its next generation of well-rounded leaders with the skills required to lead in a globally-integrated world, and instilling the sense of responsibility to the community,” he added.
Hailing from Argentina, Brazil, India, Mexico, Switzerland and the USA, the IBM team of high achievers and potential leaders from IBM worked with the three selected organisations for one month and shared their expertise in marketing, record governance, and data management and administration.
The IBM CSC, launched in 2008, is an innovative, international corporate volunteerism program with a triple benefit of pro bono consulting for communities across the world, unique leadership development and increased understanding of growth markets for IBM. Over 2,000 participants from over 50 countries have participated in the program.
Selection is based on their expertise in business development and marketing, and their passion to serve the community. Each IBM volunteer commits six months of his time – three months for pre-work, one month in Kuching, and two months for post-service work – as part of the programme.
Since 2009, six CSC teams, comprising 55 IBMers from across the globe have been deployed to Johor, Penang and Kota Kinabalu. The teams’ assignments included coaching on marketing and fund-raising campaigns for local non-profit organisations, sharing of business management skills with SMEs, and establishing best research practices for local universities such as the Universiti Sains Malaysia, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, and Universiti Malaysia Sabah.
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