ServiceQUIK

Digital transformation is a necessity for businesses across all industries. Digitizing alone is a challenging and time-consuming process, but it’s even more onerous for small and medium-sized businesses, limited by capital and talent. ServiceQUIK is one of the leading business management platforms that provides the software solution to help SMBs to overcome these complex and costly hurdles. As a young and growing business itself, ServiceQUIK strives to place the needs of customers at the heart of every decision it makes. This requires a committed and agile team who work in sync to provide an all-in-one, easy to use and affordable solution, SMBs need to be successful.

Offering Best-of-its-Kind Services

ServiceQUIK is incorporated in both Singapore and the USA and was founded less than three years ago from just an idea. Its flagship product ZING has been built from the ground up to be affordable, end-to-end cloud SaaS business management software for SMB’s. It is more accessible, complete and easier to use than what’s available and helps businesses to manage, run, grow and become the success they wish to be in this digital age. ZING simplifies and digitizes the entire customer journey starting with an online presence of website, 24/7 bookings and eCommerce storefront, to automated marketing, CRM, point of sale and inventory management. It manages the staff, their rosters and their commissions. Ot lets the business sell online and in-store the like of services, packages, memberships, courses, events, products, gift cards and much more. The mobile app provides business on the go and a customer portal allows clients to view, update and make orders from their profile. ZING provides incredible reporting, analysis and insights into the business and its operations, too.

ZING has incredible new features arriving later this year which will further help businesses as they digitize to grow, expand and become more competitive. ServiceQUIK will also launch ZING medical, their amaZING new end to end clinic management system for the medical and healthcare sectors.

The Man with a Plan

Paul has spent his career in technology and has held many senior executive roles throughout. He was most recently the CIO of a large financial services organization followed by the global leader of technology for the IBM Corporation, which he decided to step out of to start ServiceQUIK. Along with his co-founder who has a broad depth across retail operations and marketing, they began their entrepreneurial journey by investing their own capital and then convinced others to invest theirs in developing ServiceQUIK’s vision and its first brand - ZING.

Paul has always been a leader with a vision and the ideas to always make things better. Start-ups need cash to turn those ideas into reality and the challenge is to convince others to invest in that vision. Paul says “It’s the same in the corporate world with making business decisions– ensuring a satisfactory ROI.” He used to ask his teams, “If this was your $1M to invest - would you spend it in the same manner as you are asking now?”

The Crucial Stepping Stone

Whilst still working as a senior tech executive, Paul and his wife built a successful brand in Singapore, from the ground up. In doing so, they found how technically overwhelming and costly it was to deploy the digital means by which to make the business the success it is today – having to patch together some 12 SaaS products and still their data wasn’t central and easily accessible. In living through this and speaking to many other business owners, they found they all faced the same plight – lots of advice, complex solutions and inevitably costly and difficult to use and administer, and all felt it shouldn’t be this hard. They then made the huge decision to leave the corporate world and to back themselves there by creating ZING – the Everyday Hero for business owners.

Bracing the Challenges Head On

According to Paul, while an entrepreneur may have the most wonderful idea, the most challenging skills are to raise the capital and then the ability to deliver on it. -  otherwise it will never happen To turn the concept into a design, pull together the people who will build it, plan the development, raise the capital, find early adopters, provide the feedback into engineering, create a brand design – then start marketing the product and finally, someone actually pays to use it. The journey from idea to sale is long and difficult, surrounded by many obstacles.

The Makeup of a Successful Entrepreneur

Grit,determination,energy and will to survive, are the vital attributes of an entrepreneur, Paul believes. Every entrepreneur must have a business partner they can fully trust and who is wed to success as much as they are. Decisions need to be made every day. Diversity of thought and the opportunity to discuss and challenge these, are imperative if the product is to be successful. Establishing an advisory board with deep skills and experience in the areas you are embarking upon is key to opening up new ideas and opportunities. Entrepreneurs must celebrate the wins and learn from the losses or as Paul calls it, “Champagne and razor blades!Momentum is key with a small start-up team and short-term deliverables/milestones materialize the successes for the team.

The Idea of Customer-Centric Innovation

When asked about how the company innovates, Paul said, “Customer. Customer. Customer. The product must use customer-led design principles to prioritize and to invest”. You may not always agree with the customer’s input, though the feedback loop is invaluable, especially during the early adopter phase. It’s not always about a new feature, but often about how to make an existing feature, function better. Clearly understand the problem your customer is experiencing inside-out and ensure new innovations seek to solve it and remove their pain. You want them to love your product and tell others about it.

The Impact of Disruptive Technologies

From Paul’s experience he knows the larger a company gets, the slower and more disconnected with their customer they become. Disruptive innovation seeks to change existing industries by providing a more affordable and accessible solution to an existing market. Software allows ServiceQUIK to build just about anything, but what will improve a customer’s life is the element that will set the solution apart from the rest.

The Future of the Company

The future looks bright to Paul. Now, post-COVID, all businesses must embrace digitization and leverage technology to create their competitive advantage to grow revenue and improve their operations to increase their profits. Technology is moving very quickly and cloud based design has presented many opportunities to build and deliver solutions quickly –  overtaking clunky old legacy options. Customers not only expect business solutions to be easy to use, but to be affordable, and happen now and with the click of a finger, or they will quickly go elsewhere if it doesn’t.

As businesses all over the world embrace digitization more, ZING is perfectly positioned to become their business management partner. By removing the angst and complexity of technology and providing the means to connect, secure, improve, simplify and grow their business, ZING and ZINGmedical will become the go-to partners for SMB success.

Advice for Budding Leaders

“Be sure you know what you are getting yourselves into. You must be 100% dedicated to the success of the business – this is NOT a part-time role”, says Paul.You will need to financially back yourself, as it will be quite a while before you will draw a modest salary and you must have a trusted business partner with equal skin in the game. You must be healthy and energetic as you will take on many roles yourself, especially in the early days. You must have a network and continue to grow it, as you will need investors, advisors and later on, channels to market. You will need to grow your skills in learning to deflect the time-wasters and those that add no value to your cause. You must never give up.

“If you can embrace all that -you may just have a chance”, concludes Paul.