Transforming the business has always been a priority for the House of Teak. Established in 1974, the local company started out as a furniture distributor. With good foresight of market trends and in-depth knowledge of customer preferences, it moved into producing quality teak furniture, and launched its own brand – Scanteak in 1988. Over the years, the company expanded its footprint into Brunei, Taiwan, Japan, USA, Canada and Germany.

Timely Insights to Drive Organisational Transformation

In 2016, Scanteak embarked on the journey of transformation to stay competitive using SPRING Singapore’s Business Excellence (BE) framework. It underwent the BE assessment in Jun 2017.

“Our management believe that the BE framework is a holistic management tool. It provided us with a tested and proven methodology, akin to an introspection into our company,” explained Ms Jamie Lim (pictured), Scanteak’s Regional Marketing Director.

“It helped us to formalise our systems and processes, as the knowledge and techniques were already present in a company of our size. This gave us a defined and concise roadmap of our company’s internal workflow, enabling us to better illustrate to employees how the different departments complement one another.”

The BE assessment helped to validate Scanteak’s strengths especially with regards to the use of technology and data, and providing excellent service.

Leveraging Technology to Increase Productivity and Enable Effective Decision-making

To improve customer responsiveness, Scanteak leverages technology to support knowledge management, allowing employees to analyse and share information for effective decision-making. Its Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system enables front-liners to review customers’ buying behaviours; thus empowering them to provide personalised service like selling complementary products which suit customers’ needs.

Scanteak is also moving towards digitalising manual processes to improve productivity and reduce costs. Its automated Point-of-Sale (POS) system eliminates manual data entry by linking to a back-end logistics system, allowing automatic scheduling of deliveries to customers. By reducing manual paperwork, time savings of 70% were achieved and human errors were minimised.

Using Data to Identify Future Trends for Growth

With the POS system linked to its Business Intelligence (BI) platform – a dashboard that allows the company to analyse and visualise data, historical data on procurement orders, turnover or sales can be easily analysed, enabling management to predict future trends and translate them into actionable insights.

For example, analysing sales conversion rates for various customer segments, average spend and outlet traffic equipped Scanteak to develop targeted sales and promotion strategies to boost revenue and profit margins.

Commitment to Deliver Excellent Customer Experience

One of Scanteak’s key strengths validated during the BE assessment is the commitment to create great experiences for customers. Through SPRING’s Customer-Centric Initiative (CCI), Scanteak formalised its customer service framework, mapped out key customer touchpoints and empowered employees to deliver better customer service in 2015.

It also invested in augmented reality which enhanced customer experience by helping them to make effective purchase decisions. Customers can visualise how furniture would fit in their homes, and select from Scanteak’s full range of products which would not have been possible previously due to space limitations in physical stores.

Based on the BE assessors’ recommendation, Scanteak is looking to develop a more robust approach to measure customer satisfaction and integrate a customer satisfaction index within its feedback system.

BE Recognition as a Trust Mark to Boost Competitiveness

Scanteak achieved their BE certification – the Singapore Quality Class (SQC) trust mark in June 2017, which elevated staff morale and reaffirmed its growth strategy. It is the first furniture manufacturer and retailer to achieve the SQC.

Ms Lim said that gaining new businesses has become much easier with the SQC, especially in Japan, where Scanteak plans to open three more outlets to reach its target of 100 stores.

“When we enter new markets, even though companies, banks, property owners, customers and stakeholders may not have heard about us before, they would know of Singapore and its reputation as a world-class economy. By extension, having a Singapore-branded trust mark gives us leverage and assures our overseas partners that we are trustworthy. They are thus more willing to help us gain a foothold in new markets.” Ms Lim explained.