Financial institutions around the world are facing greater operational and compliance risks with the emergence of the recent pandemic, COVID-19.

Financial authorities and organisations everywhere are acknowledging these difficulties with the US Securities and Exchange Commission offering relief and guidance to registered funds and their investment advisers. In the EU, financial authorities have provided initial guidance to ensure continuity of business under financial stress.

In Singapore, the Singapore Exchange (SGX) has rolled out a US$5 million care package to provide support and relief measures amid the outbreak. The SGX care package will benefit Singapore-listed companies as well as SGX employees and contract staff. The move was introduced by the financial community to reinforce the city-state’s resilience as a global marketplace.

According to a Verint whitepaper, Financial Compliance in 2020: Asia Leader’s series, the Singaporean government is recognised by the industry at large as being particularly supportive of proven financial regulatory technology (regtech) offerings.

By contrast, the UK government was found to be comparatively reluctant to promote regtech offerings, tending instead to identify issues without offering specific solutions.

Also Read: Singapura Finance is the latest to join digital license race, partnering digital payment startup MatchMove

It is expected that Singapore will continue to live up to its reputation as a first-class financial hub during this time and is showing every sign of being committed to ensuring uninterrupted operations.

The city-state is taking the global lead to proactively manage the COVID-19 situation by supporting people who are putting their lives and jobs at risk, as well as helping companies survive while maintaining compliance with regulations, even when they are focused on unprecedented events that are changing operating business models forever.

Compliance in these troubling times

To cope with the current demands, Singapore banks have unveiled packages to help companies and other customers with relief assistance to help tide them over the impact of the outbreak. These packages are aimed at helping small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to ensure business continuity while maintaining their standard financial operations.

Banks such as OCBC are mitigating the fallout from the outbreak by helping their partners see through this challenging period in their business operations and by maintaining their quality and compliance.

Multinational banks such as Standard Chartered are currently introducing measures for clients who ask for financial assistance to cope with these challenges.

DBS also unveiled the second round of relief measures to help businesses in Singapore cope amid the virus outbreak, encouraging companies to go digital. These measures include financial relief packages and digital initiatives for companies to fast-track their digital adoption and rely less on physical processes.

Also read: Why there is no better time to upskill than this COVID-19 crisis

As workforces shift to remote-working, DBS has prepared its back office and deployed home agents to assist with the expected increase of more customers online.

The top concern for most companies is ensuring consistent cash flow to cover ongoing operating costs when revenues are under pressure. These measures include extending the due date of the affected business’ trade finance bills as well as extending bridging loans in the form of more working capital financing to affected businesses.

However, as the banking sector does what it can to mitigate the fallout from COVID-19, there are still many competing priorities for leaders to juggle. In all of this, compliance must not be forgotten.

Data quality, reporting accuracy and timeliness cannot be compromised no matter the circumstances. Centralised governance procedures must be in place, including documenting and clearly articulating decisions by authorised personnel if faced with potential variations from ordinary levels of monitoring and control due to the global crisis.

How can companies continue to champion compliance during times of crisis?

Leaders must navigate these challenging times without compromising a focus on compliance.

Here is our five-point action plan for any leader juggling business survival and compliance:

• Make compliance a centrepiece in your business continuity plans (BCP). As you build your BCP ensure that you factor in how you will manage compliance remotely, what security will look like and how you will continue to meet your obligations in these unprecedented times.
• Prioritise the compliance conversation even in times of chaos by engaging with compliance staff and understanding the processes instead of dismissing them as just another round of work or as something that can wait until later. Keep compliance visible.
• Adopt regulatory technology solutions (regtech) that can help your enterprise achieve and maintain financial compliance, better serve your customers while gaining your business a competitive edge.
• Embrace automation as it can ease the burden of expanding and often stringent and demanding regulations, freeing skilled staff from low-value, repetitive tasks improving reliability and performance. Automation is also key as businesses shift to remote workforces.
• Continue to train employees with the right skills, information, tools, and mindsets for them to understand compliance and what role they play according to their geographic boundaries now and into the future.
• Adopt a coordinated approach with clearly defined rationales and targeted timelines to effectively practice compliance and ensure it is not lost in the conversation. This is necessary for audits, regulator inquiries, market stability, and health crises.

The best way to protect your business from future compliance risk is to do everything that you can to ensure that compliance remains active, visible, and assertive during the current crisis. This way, you can ensure that your organisation is well-positioned to successfully tackle the post-COVID-19 wave of business activity.

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Editor’s note: e27 aims to foster thought leadership by publishing contributions from the community. Become a thought leader in the community and share your opinions or ideas and earn a byline by submitting a post. We are discussing inclusivity at work and women all of March. Share your thoughts, tips and best practices on how we can make the startup ecosystem more inclusive, gender and culture diverse.

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Baby products e-commerce startup Kyarlay snags US$750K from EME, United Managers Japan Inc.

Kyarlay, a Myanmar-based baby products e-commerce and delivery provider, has raised US$750,000 in funding from Myanmar-based VC firm EME, United Managers Japan Inc., which marked its largest investment to date.

The company was co-founded by husband and wife Soe Lin Myat and Nang Mo while expecting their first child.

Both Soe Lin Myat and Nang Mo previously worked for SEA Group; they implement a balance between the tech giant’s standard and localised approach in their new business.

Through its app and contents, Kyarlay claimed to have created a strong community among young Myanmar parents. It recently started to develop their own branded products for the Myanmar market with the intention to offer quality items for a lower price to their customers.

Kyarlay marks EME’s eighth investment in Myanmar since launching in October 2018. EME is a VC firm based in the country and provides post-investment support to its portfolio companies to help them scale.

Singapore-based mobile ordering startup Eatsy halts operations

Singapore-based mobile ordering platform Eatsy has announced that it will halt all operations from April 1 until further notice in a push-notification to all users yesterday.

Also Read: Ex-Oway employee’s rural e-commerce startup Ezay secures investment from EME Myanmar

Claiming negative business impacts resulting from COVID-19, Eatsy informed all customers that they must redeem any cashback they have accrued by March 31.

Tim Davies, COO of Waitrr, another mobile ordering and payment service in Singapore, commented on the matter: “We are saddened to hear the news. This couldn’t have come at a worse time for Eatsy’s restaurant partners who we know are all suffering as a result of COVID-19.”

Waitrr allows the automation of order taking and payment processes that enables restaurants to increase the capacity of their staff so they can provide personalised, premium service to their guests.

Home interior startup Shadez receives US$100K funding from Inflection Point Ventures

Inflection Point Ventures (IPV) has invested US$100,000 in the Mumbai-based interiors startup Shadez.

Shadez claims to be India’s first paint company to deliver a painting job in a day’s time with the liberty to choose paint of your choice.

For the seed round, IPV said it will provide incubation support to the team with expertise in business strategy, expansion, and risk mitigation.

According to co-founders Adarsh Anand and Amit Tiwari, the funding will be used to expand to other metro cities and scale up operations by adding manpower and focussing on marketing and machinery.

Jignesh Kenia, an IPV investor said, “Shadez is changing the game with respect to painting services by considerably reducing the delivery time through efficiency, planning, and well-trained labour. They literally take away the pain out of the painting job with their one-day turnaround for repainting jobs.”

Robo-advisor startup Smartly shuts down operation, citing intense competition

VinaCapital, Vietnam-based asset management firm that owns Singapore-based robo-advisor Smartly, has shut down the latter’s operation due to “intense” competition in the digital investment advisory space, DealStreetAsia reported.

Founded in 2015, Smartly was acquired by VinaCapital in 2019. Through a notice on its website, the startup said its decision to wind down operations was guided by its parent company’s strategic considerations since weeks ago.

Also Read: Vietnamese VC firm VinaCapital Ventures officially debuts with US$100M

“After evaluating the investments that would be necessary to continue to build the platform in terms of both technology and talent, we arrived at the decision that this business in Singapore no longer aligns with our group’s strategic objectives,” the firm said late Wednesday.

Smartly’s portfolio includes more than 20 exchange-traded funds (ETFs), and the startup charges its customers annual management fees of 0.5-one per cent, and the underlying ETF fee charged by the ETF providers (0.1-0.25 per cent per year).

Smartly said it has arranged the return of all funds held in customers’ accounts and informed them of another service provider with whom it has negotiated a special arrangement, according to VinaCapital.

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Image Credit: Kyarlay

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What is evident is that technology has changed the way customers buy. However, before we delve deeper, let us first understand the typical customer journey of someone who is purchasing a product or service, regardless of whether it is a B2B, B2C, offline or online business.

Businesses need to evolve to adapt to changing customer behaviour brought about by the digitally evolving world. The traditional customer journey has been disrupted and although most companies know how crucial it is to evolve with technology and create digital processes and solutions, successfully implementing them is a different story. Regardless of the nature or set-up of the business, the most basic customer journey sees the customer go through four stages: awareness, consideration, purchase and advocacy.

The journey can be represented as what is known as a sales funnel.

Awareness

In the awareness stage, the prospective buyer learns about your product or service through exposure to your brand. This could have been through traditional marketing efforts like word of mouth, referrals, newspaper, magazine, television or radio advertisement, event participation and flyers.

Or, in today’s digitally evolving world, the prospect might become aware of your brand through a Google search, a photo posted on Instagram by someone they follow, a sponsored story on their Facebook feed or a targeted email you sent to them through an email list.

Also Read: The essentials of mapping a customer journey across digital assets

The hope is that with awareness comes interest, and the prospect is curious to learn more about your product by visiting your website or heading down to your retail store. By creating awareness, you are starting a relationship with the prospect. The more the prospect gets to know you, the more likely the prospect will buy from you. If you push your product or service from the beginning, you will turn off prospects and chase them away.

The goal here is to establish your expertise, offer to help them in any way you can and move the prospect from the ‘awareness’ stage to ‘consideration’ stage.
Consideration
At this stage, the prospect is evaluating whether she wants to buy your product or service.

She might also be considering other options, including competitor products or even the DIY route.

The prospect will be gathering as much information as she can by scouring your website to read product descriptions or watch demo videos, looking for online reviews, following you on social media or asking friends or family for opinions.

Well-timed attractive offers such as free shipping, a discount, bonus product, money-back guarantee or a 1-year warranty can tip the scales in your favour and convince the prospect to buy your product. Social proof like testimonials and reviews posted on a social media platform will also contribute to the decision-making process.
Purchase
At this stage, the prospect is becoming a customer by finalising the deal with you.

The purchase is formalised by signing a contract or clicking the ‘buy’ button. And, of course, making payment.

The customer’s journey should not end after making the purchase. You will want to move her from being a customer to be an advocate (supporter and evangelist of your brand).

Also Read: Two babies and US$45M Series A in tow: A female entrepreneur’s journey to dominating the global payroll industry
Advocacy
Advocacy is the stage where the customer is retained, and brand loyalty is built so that she comes back as a returning customer and skips the ‘awareness”’ or even ‘consideration’ stages and moves straight to ‘purchase’.

Your after-sales service programme and post-purchase marketing efforts are designed to keep her stay engaged with your brand. You want to focus on keeping her happy so that she returns as a repeat customer and becomes a brand advocate. Word of mouth is a powerful force, and no one can do it better than a happy customer.

Of course, this assumes your product or service solves the customer’s problem or fulfils her needs.

THE EVOLUTION OF THE CUSTOMER JOURNEY (SALES FUNNEL)

Once you understand the journey of your customer, you must map out the typical journey for your business and how your business is set-up to attend to a customer’s needs at different stages of the journey.

Also, if you are an existing business, think about how different the customer journey was before and after the world digitally evolved. If your business is new, think of how your own buying journey has changed over time when buying a product such as a new pair of shoes, smartphone or insurance plan.

Let us have a look at two scenarios to put things into perspective.

Imagine that a customer wants to buy a vacuum cleaner soon as hers is starting to give problems. She does not have an immediate need for it but changing vacuum cleaners is on her mind.

The Customer Journey (Pre-digital Age)
Traditionally, a customer’s journey may look something like this:

Awareness
Annie first learns about the new Acme Appliances vacuum cleaner through an advertisement in the newspaper. The next day, she hears an advertisement on the new vacuum cleaner on the radio.

Consideration
Annie calls up the telephone number that was promoted in the advertisements and is invited to come down to the Acme Appliances store nearest to her for a demonstration.

Also Read: Collaborate to innovate: New age mantra for creating a sustainable startup journey

She heads down to the store and is introduced to a salesperson who explains all the new features of the vacuum cleaner, gives her a brochure and demos the product to show how silent and effective it is. Annie asks to see if other models or options are available. She even goes to another store nearby to compare similar products and prices.

Purchase
After looking at the options and evaluating the different features, the customer decides to buy the Acme vacuum cleaner. She fills in her information on an order form and makes payment.

Advocacy
Annie brings the vacuum cleaner home to use it and is happy with the purchase. She tells her friend about the Acme vacuum cleaner and recommends it as a worthwhile purchase.

A month later, the customer gets a printed brochure in the mail highlighting a new attachment for the vacuum cleaner that will be released soon. She is also reminded that she can bring in her vacuum cleaner for free servicing in six months.

The Customer Journey (Current)
Now, consider the customer’s journey for the same product today.

Awareness
Twenty years ago, Annie bought an Acme Appliances vacuum cleaner that served her well. Several years later, she bought an identical replacement, but now she needs a new vacuum cleaner, and Acme Appliances is no longer in business.

So, Annie does a Google search on the latest and most popular vacuum cleaner. She comes across the new vacuum cleaner from Stark Enterprises in several search results. Clicking the various links, she learns more about the product, its features and benefits.

Also Read: Why fintech companies should learn about customer retention from e-commerce companies

Consideration
After doing some online research, Annie narrows down her choices to the Stark vacuum cleaner and a competitor’s model made by Wayne Industries.

She does more research by watching reviews of both vacuum cleaners on YouTube and reading reviews on blogs. She also checks the ratings on popular online marketplaces. As she is re-reading the information on the Stark vacuum cleaner product page, a pop-out window opens at the bottom of her screen letting her know that a Sue from Mont Kiara had purchased the same product one day ago.

After comparing offerings from both brands, she decides to buy the Stark vacuum cleaner. While the features are similar to the Wayne model, she was attracted by Stark’s three-year warranty, free shipping and bonus dust-trap device that came with the purchase.

Purchase
Annie clicks on the “buy now” button, fills in her order info and makes payment through PayPal. She receives an order receipt in her inbox that informs her that the product will be delivered within five days.

Advocacy
A week later, a courier delivers the Stark vacuum cleaner. Annie tries it out for the first time and is happy with the results.

She takes a photo of the vacuum cleaner with her clean living room in the background, adds a filter and posts it onto her Instagram account, which is automatically shared on her Facebook account. She adds the hashtag #starkvacuumcleaner with a short positive review. Her post gets 29 likes, two shares and eight comments, one from Stark Enterprises community manager.

Also Read: Why reciprocity is key to building deep customer relationships

A day later, Annie receives an email thanking her for her purchase. She is given a referral code and the email states that if she shares the code with her friends or on social media, she will receive a US$20 voucher each time someone buys a Stark Vacuum Cleaner with her referral code. Every month, she also receives an email on tips on how to maintain the Stark Vacuum Cleaner and suggestions on how to keep an apartment dust-free.

I am sure you can relate to Annie’s customer journey that takes place in today’s digitally evolving world. If you are above the age of 35, you probably can relate to Annie’s journey from two decades ago.

While the scenarios given were for a B2C order, many B2B customers would follow a similar journey. If not, the experience would be a hybrid of both scenarios.

The fact is, the customer journey has changed and will continue to change as the world evolves digitally.

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This story has been excerpted by courtesy of the publisher from Evolve, Adapt or Collapse by J C Sum (Evolve&Adapt, 2020).

To purchase the book, please visit this site.

Image Credit: Cam Morin on Unsplash

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We have always kept our focus on our mission of empowering entrepreneurs with the tools to build and grow their companies. A couple of months ago, we began building a platform that we envision to do just that.

When we quietly launched e27 Pro, our community has been most supportive; offering encouragement and feedback that helped us design e27 Pro into what it is today: a membership programme that is designed to give you actionable insights, exclusive business-building programmes, and tools that enable your company’s success.

We’d like to tell you more about the early adopters of e27 Pro who have helped and are continually helping us make the platform better.

KK Fund

Founded in 2015, KK Fund is a venture capital investment firm based in Singapore. The firm invests in seed-stage internet and mobile startups across Southeast Asia, Hong Kong, and Taiwan.

Incubate Fund

Incubate Fund is the largest and best-known seed to early-stage focused venture capital fund in Japan. Incubate Fund (also known as ‘IF’) is run by four venture capitalists who specialise in Internet business and frontier tech investment, founded in 2010.

Incubate Fund is ranked within the top 5 best consistent performance venture capital firms globally in “Preqin Private Capital Performance Update: 4Q2018”.

Spiral Ventures

Spiral Ventures is a Japanese venture capital fund and headquartered in Singapore. SV has been investing in early-stage and tech startup in Southeast Asia, India, and Japan since 2013. SV has over 60 portfolio companies across 3 areas in various sectors today.

Monk’s Hill Ventures

Founded in 2014, Monk’s Hill Ventures is a leading Southeast Asia early-stage tech venture capital firm. The firm invests in companies that will transform millions of lives in Southeast Asia. With the vision to back the best founders in building iconic companies, its founding partners Peng T. Ong and Kuo-Yi Lim are seasoned entrepreneurs who have built and backed global companies in Silicon Valley and Asia. MHV has a presence in Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam, and Thailand.

Also read: Meet 4 VCs who are early adopters of e27 Pro

Golden Gate Ventures

Golden Gate Ventures is an early-stage venture capital firm investing across Southeast Asia. Since 2011, the firm has invested in over 30 companies across more than 7 countries in Asia. The firm invests in internet & mobile startups across many sectors, including e-commerce, payments, marketplaces, mobile applications, and SaaS platforms.

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We’ll be sharing with you some more of e27 Pro early adopters soon! Watch out for them.

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Attracting the right customers is the key to success in business, whether you have a startup or you’ve been in business for years.

In my role as an adviser to entrepreneurs, I often see businesses make the mistake of trying to be too many things for too many people. For example, Xerox tried to broaden the use of “xerox” as the standard term for “photocopying” to extend the company’s existing customer segment into office automation and all kinds of computing. As Xerox watched its market share dwindle instead, it realised too late that these segments were already defined, and the company needed a new focused brand to attract customers from other segments.

These days, branding is less about products or solutions, and more about the overall customer experience and expectations. If the shopping process, delivery, and support level does not match customer expectations, no innovative product features will compensate. And the result will be less visibility and slower growth, with fewer delighted customers and little word-of-mouth marketing.

In my experience, it’s best to start by selecting your desired customer segment first and match it with a branding model that best fits those customers. After that, you’re ready to design your product, marketing, shopping environment, delivery model, and support around that model.

Don’t know which branding model is for you? Here are eight common models for you to start considering, ideally before you design your product or launch your service.

Also Read: 6 tried-and-tested branding tips for your startup

1. Premium or exclusive solution
The audience for this business model is limited, so make sure you can deliver to their expectations. Existing brands such as Tesla, Virgin Atlantic, Rolex, and Harvard University seek to appeal to this elite customer segment, implying prestige, exclusivity, and high customer personalization.

2. Lowest-cost solution with minimal customisation
At the other end of the spectrum, many startups and big companies, including Amazon and Walmart, expand their customer segment by being the most cost-efficient, with low overhead and little customisation. Don’t attempt this model without high automation and a big investment upfront.

3. Family or hometown business everyone can trust
Many customers are highly attracted to these local businesses, where they may know the owner and always enjoy the warmth and intimacy of a personal customer experience. This is by far the most common brand out there, but without rebranding, it has very limited potential for growth and scaling.

4. Tech-focused service that solves complex problems
Companies in this realm typically are thought of as a service business, even though they may offer product components as well. The customer experience is a function of satisfaction with the service, support, and usability of complex products. Examples would include ADT Security Services and IBM.

5. Service business to find the best solution
Examples of this business model and brand would include companies like Airbnb for finding places to stay, and Expedia for the best airline reservations. To be successful in this type of business, you need to satisfy two customer segments: the solution provider and the end-user customer.

6. Recognised expert and specialist in one domain
Depth of focus is both the strength and the weakness of this model. The message is easy to communicate, but there is always the temptation to move to a mass market for growth. You can find specialists in almost every industry, and their success is gated to customer experience and reviews.

Also Read: 6 simple tips for branding your website

7. Driven by purpose more than profits
For some market segments, there is no greater attraction than a worthy cause, where business success is a byproduct of the company focus, rather than the primary objective. Examples include Patagonia’s commitment to sustainability while selling clothing, and Whole Foods, the organic grocer.

8. Public utility required by all customer segments
Becoming a recognized brand as a public utility may be difficult and costly, since most of these positions are already occupied by large companies with long histories. You may be able to provide cheaper electrical power via solar, but bureaucratic regulations and credibility can be expensive.

In my experience with startups, brand positioning is often done last, after all the cost and quality tradeoffs, options, packaging, and support process are set. For example, technologists will try to build the best high-tech product, and then somehow expect to become the low-cost, high-volume provider for the nontech market segment. It’s a recipe for disaster.

Other companies try to change their branding later, like when growth stalls, without any changes to product or process, trying to attract an additional market segment for growth. This approach is equally fraught with peril.

My message is to make branding an integral part of your solution design process, and keep it there.

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This article was published on nfinitiv.

Image Credit: Joshua Earle on Unsplash

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