Insight
SMEs on the Invisible Champion: Brand Reinvention Helps
It is only through hard work that one can win! Under the wave of globalization, many Taiwanese SMEs have defied competition and actively transformed themselves to secure a place in the global industrial chain, which can be regarded as the invisible champions in the industry, and it is worthwhile for enterprises in the midst of transformation and upgrading to learn from them.
For enterprise transformation and brand management, SME operators are eager to understand how to initiate changes, show new management thinking and embrace globalization, and the 3/15 Swiss Branding Forum will be held in Taiwan soon. Before the seminar, we have invited Mr. Chih-Hang Cheng, General Manager of Spectrum Electronics, who is the second generation to take over the reins of the company and also successfully lead the brand reengineering, and Mr. Ronnie Lee, former General Manager of Process Taiwan, to briefly share with us how SMEs can successfully transform their business and effectively enhance the competitiveness of their brand as well as its sustainable development.
Lack of regulations for enterprises to follow and human-centeredness will be a stumbling block to scaling up.
CHENG:
The problems I saw in CTC after my return to Taiwan may actually be similar to those of many Taiwan SMEs. For example, if you look at a Taiwanese city from the air, you will find that the streets are uneven, the colors of the buildings are different, so it can be said that it is very diversified, but relatively there is no order. Why do Westerners or Japanese follow the rules in the city? The thinking behind this is that following the rules is good for the long-term future, like the trees planted around Kiyomizu-dera Temple in Japan, which are all materials preserved for the temple's continuous maintenance 400 years later.
A similar problem can be seen in Taiwan's corporate management, that is, the lack of rules and regulations in doing things, and the fact that everything is people-centered. In fact, like Germany and Switzerland, Taiwan has many excellent small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), but their brand value is not as effective as that of the brands of these countries in communicating to the public. Taiwan's strengths in the past in the SME industry lie in hardware manufacturing, with a high degree of flexibility, responsiveness, and quality that has long been recognized in Europe, the United States, and Japan, which makes it very suitable for the development of core and key technologies and the establishment of a stable niche market in the global industrial chain. Therefore, it is important and urgent to establish internal and external corporate standards and enhance corporate brand value based on Taiwan's uniqueness.
Lee:
Headquartered in Zurich, Switzerland, and with offices in Taipei and Shanghai, ProLogic has observed cultural differences in the course of serving many companies in the East and the West: in Switzerland and other continental European companies are very well organized from identifying business models, branding, to international deployment, and naturally have the concept of branding when establishing a business, and will seek the professional services of branding consulting and design firms; whereas in Taiwan, companies may be confined to the past OEM thinking and the framework of successful experience, which makes the decision time for enterprises to invest in branding relatively slow. However, in Taiwan, the decision-making time for enterprises to invest in brand building may be relatively slow due to the framework of the past OEM mentality and successful experience. However, branding and management can bring transformation and evolution to Taiwan's SMEs that are in urgent need of restructuring, and is one of the most powerful tools for enterprises to stand out from their competitors.
Consistency between internal and external brands to enhance corporate competitiveness
CHENG:
CTC as a power solution OEM brand has been around for 30 years and has gained a foothold in the industry. However, looking back at the time when the company was founded, it was actually a start-up, and what a start-up thinks about is how to survive. When I returned to Taiwan in 2009 to take over the company, although the foundation of the company was more solid, it was still a continuation of how to survive as an enterprise. In the face of rapid changes in the external market, I hope that CTC will be able to create a visionary brand value and norms for its employees to follow through brand reengineering, and to enhance its competitiveness based on the continuation of its existing success.
Branding must be recognized from the top to the bottom of the company and be consistent with the company's vision.
In the process of rebranding, internal communication is very important, and every member of the company must understand why rebranding is necessary and what benefits it will bring to the company. Leading employees to re-examine the company from the customer's point of view, discovering the company's unique value, and at the same time amplifying this unique value is an astringent and hardening process, and the direction of this hardened corporate value must be closely integrated with the company's development strategy, rather than creating a brand that is completely different from the company's inherent branding, which would fail to resonate with both the internal and the external worlds.
Lee:
Branding is not a superficial project, but a way to express the core content in a human-perceivable way, so that the enterprise can achieve internal and external consistency. Therefore, branding must be recognized from top to bottom of the enterprise, otherwise it will be easily reduced to slogans and cannot be truly understood by the employees. When the employees cannot understand the difference between their own enterprise and the competitors, it will not be able to create a sense of value for the customers, and it will be more difficult for the enterprise to increase its profits.
Therefore, brand building is a process that requires the participation of core members within the enterprise, and the corporate identity criteria developed by the corporate consultant after discussing the core values of the enterprise with the owners are the brand values that can be followed and put into practice by the employees and the enterprise, so as to deepen the meaning of the brand internally, and convey the enterprise's commitment to the customers externally, and to build up the consensus and centripetal force of the entire staff in this process. In the process, it builds the consensus and centripetal force of all employees, which becomes a solid foundation for the transformation of the enterprise.
God's teammates reinforce each other! Brand communication is more divided
Lee:
Looking back at the reasons for the success of many enterprises in rebranding, apart from the fact that the enterprise owner has the idea of brand innovation, it is also important that both the enterprise owner and the consultant company should be flexible. No matter if the enterprise owner has problems in internal communication, he or she has the flexibility to outsource the support of the consultant company, and then help to promote the rebranding of the enterprise through the external force. On the other hand, the appointed consulting firm should also be flexible. Prosperity has cross-industry and international experience and views, and unlike other consulting firms, we emphasize the idea of co-creation with the enterprise to find a feasible way in the process of brand re-branding, so that the enterprise can find a brand culture with a sense of identity from the top to the bottom.
CHENG:
Companies have a good understanding of their own industries, plus the management consulting firm has rich experience and successful cases in various industries, which can help companies communicate internally, manage new brands and effectively show their brand advantages. The results of our cooperation with Prosperity are also quite remarkable. Take the new corporate website as an example. In the past, CTC's corporate website was the same as many SMEs' websites in Taiwan, which was rather sunny and even unsearchable in many areas, which is a big problem in the information age. However, after the relaunch of the website, many of our potential customers were actually surprised to find that more and more customers from all over the world came to look at our website, and the time spent on the website, the effective browsing, and the rate of repeat visits also increased significantly. I believe the re-branding of CTC, which was recognized with a number of awards last year, also helped us to stand out in the selection process. In addition to the company's own achievements, the consistency of the brand both internally and externally made us stand out in the selection process.
Consistent internal and externalization of the brand, effective eye-catching, so that companies stand out from the competition!
Everyone is QC internally, and everyone is marketing externally.
I must also emphasize that brand internal and external consistency is definitely not just the completion of corporate identity, but a continuous and gradual process that requires continuous communication with the internal, so that the enterprise clearly understands the value of the brand wants to practice, to create the field of every technical staff can quality awareness, understanding of the quality of the key points, internal everyone is a QC (quality control) of the self-consciousness, and external communication staff from the business, marketing, and to the PM are able to clearly understand the meaning of the external communication of the brand, so that everyone is Marketing. In this way, the core values of the brand and the framework of the goals regulated by the brand reengineering will become a good guideline for every employee in the face of decision-making, which will further make the brand one step closer to the sustainable operation of the enterprise.
Therefore, I hope that through this sharing of brand building cases, Members can have a clearer picture:
1. Branding can bring transformation and evolution to Taiwan's SMEs, which are in urgent need of transformation.
2. The process of building a brand is a co-creation that requires a high degree of support from the top to the bottom of the corporate leadership and organization, as well as the joint participation of the branding company.
3. Brand value direction must be closely integrated with the company's development strategy, providing a vision and imagination for the enterprise.
4. Brand building requires adequate internal communication so that every employee can understand the goal and share the work.
5. Internal and external brand consistency is a continuous process that requires adequate practice and communication.
Extend your knowledge of spectrum electronics: http://www.powerctc.com/
About Cheng Chi Hang
Mr. Li is the General Manager of CTC Spectrum Electronics Co., Ltd. and holds a Master's Degree in Industrial Design and Interactive Design from Germany, and has worked in many famous design companies in many countries and won the IF Design Award from Germany and Good Design Award from Japan. after returning to China, Mr. Li has been working in Spectrum Electronics and has been implementing a number of reforms based on the core principle of "Design Thinking". Spectrum Electronics has achieved 10 consecutive years of high performance, with a compounded growth rate of more than 15%. In recent years, Spectrum Electronics has won the Best Supplier Award from a major manufacturer, the Dun & Bradstreet SME Elite Award, and the Small Giant Award from the Ministry of Economic Affairs of the People's Republic of China (MOEA) in 2017. All of these accomplishments are proof that he has overcome all obstacles and difficulties in injecting new blood into the traditional enterprise to bring in innovations, which has made Spectrum's footsteps become more stable and solid. He has also succeeded in promoting our technology and service brands to international manufacturers, and has stood on the shoulders of giants to see the world.