Brochures

We've started an overhaul of our marketing collaterals this year, starting with our per-division brochures.  This project aims to let our customers get to know our new, exciting products faster, and to reduce costs by obviating the need to give away our 60 peso catalog to each and every customer.

Each brochure is a back-to-back long bond paper, Z-folded.  In the design and selection of our brochures, a foremost issue is the time to market of new products.  The launch windows of the new products are different, with some releasing as late as the 2nd half of 2012.  We will have to manage with a good information campaign to our sales, marketers, and clients.

Our new Water Heating brochure is now live.  Our Water Heater brochure introduces new and upcoming A.O. Smith and Atmor models, particularly A.O. Smith's solar heaters and heat pumps, as well as modern electronic wall-hung heaters.


Our Swimming Pool brochure introduces to the market the Wave Ball wave generators and Badu Jet water treadmills, the energy saving Intellipro VFD pool pump, Sta-Rite's new Intellibrite 5g LED lighting, robotic vacuum cleaners, and alternative systems to chlorine maintenance.  The brochure is already with the printing press, and we're just waiting for delivery.

Our Pumps and Tanks brochure is as of this moment still in the design stage.  It introduces 4 new brands:  Aurora fire pumps, Hydromatic sewage pumps, A.O. Smith pressure tanks, and Pentair chilled water pumps.  With the diversity of pumps that we market, it's been a tough job to prune and fit all the information so that the most important details get in our humble brochure.  This is made more challenging because of the importance of pump performance curves.

Here's an example pump curve for Taco circulators.  This covers 12 models in all.

 

We must make sure a pump chart such as this will fit and still be clearly visible to our readers. That might mean removing some models.  We're progressing so far over the last couple of weeks.  And hopefully by September, we'll be ready with all our collaterals.  At least, we should have all these by the Philconstruct 2011 exhibit.

Lost in Translation, Gone to Market

As a company working with many suppliers around the world, we've had our fair share of communication/language issues.  This is most evident when we work with people whose natural language is not English.  (Of course, they probably feel the same way, except that now, we do not know Chinese, Japanese, Korean, German, Spanish, etc.)  Initial site visits to suppliers (especially in China) is a common prerequisite, not just to improve communication, but also to assuage fears and ascertain quality and capability.  The most practical means of communication with global contacts is through emails and chat.  But because of that, body language is lost in translation.  And when we deal with state-of-the-art or very technical products, even computerized translations are hard-pressed to deal with all the myriad jargon in the water product industry.

As we adapt ourselves to the ever-changing market landscape in the Philippines, we have to do market analyses and feasibility studies for new products we wish to bring to the country.  We have to answer the following questions:  1)  Do we understand the product we're selling; 2)  Do we have a market to sell here; 3) Is the market worth it?  4)  What is the time to market?  5)  What about support and warranty, if needed?

Sportsfest Update

It's been almost three weeks since the start of our sports fest.  Between the weekly basketball and badminton games, the bowling night I was unable to attend, and chess and table tennis games to come, the current standing are as follows:

Volleyball Winners


Women's: Thermovar
Men's:  Thermovar and Service 1

Basketball Standings
Sales/Admin: 2 - 1
Thermovar: 2 - 1
Service 1 : 1 - 2
Service 2 : 1 - 2

Badminton Standings
Sales/Admin: 1 - 1
Thermovar: 0 - 2
Service 1: 1 - 1
Service 2: 2 - 0

Bowling Rankings (3 games, 12 players)
1.  Thermovar: 3153
2.  Admin & Sales: 3139
3.  Service 2: 2861
4.  Service 1: 2649

Men's Bowling Individual Winners (3 games)
1.  Rey Basa: 396
2.  Greg Amista: 392
3.  Gogo Espinosa: 351

Women's Bowling Individual Winners (3 games)
1.  Lisa Pallarca: 308
2.  Rachelle Corpuz: 280
3.  Mena Guevarra: 268


As usual, people are still prepped for the upcoming games.  Unfortunately, that also means some are getting too diligent with their practice, playing chess games during work time.

A new HR in the Block

During the previous years in Amici, HR stuff had been wanting a home in our company.  HR was not a single, orderly department, but several functions assigned among many hard-pressed multitasking people.  Payroll was done before by admin, then marketing, then accounting.  IDs and business cards are handled by IT or graphics design.  Record keeping was not done at all till last year.  Job screening and interviews were done by the operations manager.  Government contributions were outsourced to an accounting company.  And our company handbook, with the written code of discipline, was dreamed for so long, but never materializing.


But those are changing fast.  Since last month, we finally have a dedicated HR department.  With Ms Celna on board our team, we have high expectations.  The past couple of weeks, we're already seeing solid policies for review and implementation.  This week, we're back to the drawing board with job analyses.  We're going back to the basics, laying once again foundations to our fast-growing company, not to alienate the traditions, but to augment and let our company spirit rise higher and more strongly.  


It might sound odd to be doing this now, when one considers that we're past 13 years, the average life span of a company.  But really, with all the changes we've gone through, especially the ups and downs of the past two years, we feel young.  It's a brave new world.

Sportsfest Opened Early

Our 2011 sportsfest officially opened last March 25 at the Amoranto Sports Center in A. Roces Ave., Quezon City.  The schedule was somewhat unexpected to mainly due to three things.  First, it was held together with our quarterly General Assembly.  Second, that it was held before April.  And lastly, it was a whole day Friday event.

The event started with our 2nd GA of the year.  Unlike our previous one held last January, this one was less workshop and more about recognizing our people and their distinctive achievements during the first quarter.  These include major sales of A.O. Smith's residential and commercial heat pumps, a mall-sized chilled water air conditioning system, wave ball wave generator, swimming pool water treadmill, and diesel-run Aurora fire pump.  The GA was short and, true to management's fears, a little overshadowed by the subsequent sports fest.

The festivities started ala-Olympics with Mr. Gogo Espinosa running around the gym and lighting the torch.  After a brief confusion on what to do with the torch, Gogo lead the oath of sportsmanship.  Then, it was the team and muse parades.  Kelly represented Admin/Sales, and Glodys stood for Thermovar.  Service 1 Team stole Len from the Admin group, while Service 2 had Otep's daughter.


The Thermovar group's fiercely competitive spirit was visible early on, with their classy Adidas yellow and black uniforms.  Admin/Sales displayed a more fun-fun spirit, with their Amici Blue uniforms, along with dorky blue balloon hats and accessories made the previous day.  They even got to share more balloon hats of different colors to the Service teams.

The sports fest games started with two fun games, courtesy of Jheng and Gay.  The first game was a crazily tiring for a fun game.  Five randomly selected players on each team played a sack relay race.  The twist is that instead of switching players on each loop, the players already jumping had to fetch team members one by one.  In effect, the first player had to go round 5 times, and the second player 4 times.

The second game was a best-of-3 eggplant and matchbox game.  An eggplant was tied with a rope on the player's waist to hang so that it didn't touch the floor.  The player's goal was to get the matchbox on the floor to reach a finish line by swinging the eggplant.  Ryan handily won the first round, but Pando squeaked past Ryan the second round.  On the last round, it looked like a close game, until Pando managed to move his matchbox in the opposite direction.

After the fun games, we had women's and men's volleyball game.  The service groups refrained from joining the women's game.  For the women's volleyball, Thermovar handily won the game.  For the men's volleyball, Thermovar won 2 to 1 against the Admin/Sales team.  Between the Service groups, Team 1 got the best of Team 2.

After the volleyball came the much anticipated opening basketball games.  Game 1 was between Service Team 1 and Admin/Sales.  During the first half, it was a close game despite Service Team 1 leading pretty much.  However, the second half became a rally point for the Admin/Sales from which Service Team 1 just never recovered.  Admin/Sales concentrated on tighter defense in the paint and on the point guard, which lead to steals, turnovers, better defensive rebounds, lots of fast breaks, and ultimately a blow out.

Game 2 was a fierce battle between Thermovar and Service Team 2.  While Service Team 2 had the tallest players around, Thermovar had avid fans of NBA, which translated to high basketball IQ.  The highly competitive Thermovar also had the loudest cheerers.  (That had its own disadvantage: it made third parties cheer for the unsupported underdogs.)  For most of the game, Service Team 2 struggled without a point guard.  Thermovar, on the other hand, played consistently throughout the game. 

The fourth quarter proved a different story.  Service Team 2 gained momentum early fourth quarter to close in on the game and made for a tense last-2-minute seesaw game, and overtime.  During overtime, Service Team 2 gained fresh legs when a personnel returned just in time from a service job.  They went on to finally notch the back-from-behind win.

Admin/Sales: 1 - 0
Thermovar: 0 - 1
Service 1: 0 - 1
Service 2: 1 - 0

After basketball, Ms. Celna from HR announced the winners for best muse and costume.  Glodys of Thermovar was the best muse, while the Admin/Sales team won best costume.

It was a whole day event.  The first shots have been fired.  We got back to our office at 5:30pm.  But people are already looking forward to the succeeding games.

April Sports Fest

April Summer is next month, and sports fest fever is catching on.  At least for the boys.  With this year's basketball league coming in a few weeks, the guys have been busy with building teams, practicing, and making uniforms.  Meanwhile some of the women have started plotting some crazy parlor games to add some spice to the games.

Games expected to be held include badminton, basketball, billiards, bowling, chess, darts, table tennis, and volleyball.

Reflections on Trust

Last February 23, a few of us attended a forum entitled "Leading at the Speed of Trust" by Stephen M.R. Covey in Makati Shangri-la.  (Stephen M.R. Covey is the eldest son of Stephen R. Covey, author of the immensely popular Seven Habits book.)   It was a sort of synopsis to his book "The Speed of Trust".  We were seated in a table right before the big projector screen at the right side of the Rizal Ballroom.  While our seats left much to desire, everyone of us had something to take home from the forum, not just a bag, a book, and a deck of cards, but also insights, new ideas, and blooming plans.  And breakfast was good.

Trust is normally thought an intangible relation between parties.  It's in the spectrum of abstract values like love, care, faith, etc.  It is so basic to life that we don't actually delve on it often or deeply.


One key realization that is at the core of Covey's book and forum is that when we really think about it, trust is an economic metric.  As an economic metric, trust is given a very visible importance to businesses and leaders.
 
Lack of trust creates layers upon layers of bureaucracy and paperwork.  It often leads to unnecessary checks, replication of work or even throwing work out. With loss of trust, decisions stall, business is hampered, and the world slows down.  It's a tax.

When we build a good trust relation, we are able to streamline processes.  We can work based on the spirit of good will and laws rather than follow everything to the letter and trust nobody.  With trust, we are able to do our work much faster, build on the trusted works of others, and elevate our combined effectiveness.


There are apparently two aspects of trust:  trust as an integrity concern, and trust as a competency concern.  Gaining the speed of trust needs both.

When we say we trust a friend, we mean that we believe our friend to know and act in accordance to our common interest.

When we say we trust a report, we believe that the report is accurate or good enough for our needs.  We trust that the output of the person who made the report was competently made.

Somewhat ironically, checks and balances are integral in creating high trust.  Checks and balances work to build a baseline level of assurance, that either removes doubts or guaranties particular assumptions.

The value of trust is present perhaps in all relations a company may hold over its lifetime.  Even a comprehensive system of checks and balances require trust in the system, for it to to work. 

As a company determined to excel in and out, Amici must find a good balance in its evolving system of checks and balances, that can foster greater trust, and eventually accelerated growth.  We look to improve relationships with customers and with vendors, as well as between employees.