Danny Kwok

There’s no box

Recent Posts

  • Transport Management System (TMS) 101

    Transport Management System (TMS) is a system that is part of logistics with a focus on transportation. It is exciting that TMS will be going through a new phase of evolution. Like many legacy systems, the impact comes from the changes in consumer behavior and cloud technologies. For those new to TMS, this will help you provide a crash course to TMS.

    What is TMS?

    TMS is the system that automate the process to manage the transportation operations. This can come from the goods handover from warehouse to port port to port, or port to customers. TMS will handle the orders from customers, delivery shipments by truckers or carriers, transport tracking and payment process for the transportation move. In simple layman terms, it is the view to move goods from point A to Point B.

    Benefits of TMS

    The key competitor for TMS is Excel. It is surprising to see many organisations relying on Excel, phone calls and even chat applications to handle transportation needs. Often, there is no dedicated TMS team handling this domain. Everything will be recorded ultimately in Excel. Moving to the current technology landscape, you can see a major benefit of TMS will be data visibility. Customer can now see their goods moving from warehouse to delivery. Truckers can also pick and accept jobs timely leading to better truck or equipment utilisation.

    Future of TMS

    Soon, more organizations will be embracing TMS with Cloud technologies. Data visibility is a major push factor as customers want to know the value they are getting from transportation. The lower cost of iOT and GPS tracking has provided TMS with near real time tracking of goods movement. Green Logistics and Sustainability is another factor to get information using TMS regarding costs vs carbon footprint.

  • Commentary on Singapore Budget 2021 Clean and Green Transport

    For those who live in Singapore, there is a new budget 2021 to encourage clean and green transport. While I am an advocate of Green Views and Green Logistics, I have not been really wooed by its initiatives.

    Source: MOF Singapore Budget 2021
    Electric Vehicle

    Electric Vehicle (EV) is not a new technology and has greatly suffered from existent of combustion ecosystem. This make it more expensive from consumers to make the switch from combustion vehicle to EV. Having EV only means lesser combustion gases and does not eliminate the carbon footprint from the energy source. Batteries are also lethal and difficult to dispose. Moreover, majority of vehicles own by general consumers are idling in car parks since Singapore is a small area.

    Green Public Transport and Logistics

    The only vehicles to experience high usage and carbon footprint lies solely in a single area i.e Logistics and Public Transportations. This means Green Logistics and Green Public Transport. Do be aware that there is a difference between Public Transport and Green Public Transport. Imagine the entire fleet of Public Transport and Logistics converting to Electric with end to end Green processes. The carbon cost savings would be much higher than a subset of consumer whose vehicles are idling most of time. Of course, one wonders who should be paying for the conversion.

    Green Adoption

    I am a believer of cause and effect and very positive that Green Adoption can be encouraged with incentives. However, the approach to offset this encouragement with higher Petrol Duty seem diminished as these higher costs are usually pass on to the consumers. The approach to use push factor instead of pull do not appeal to the millennium generations. Overall, the view to move towards a Green Transport is good but seems skewed towards the focus on the general consumers rather than commercial consumers. Without a sound education and Green Ecosystem, the approach will always be stop-gap and partial. All in all, it is a good baby step but I always feel that more can be done.

    Disclaimer: Views expressed are opinions from the author’s own professional and personal capacity and do not represent the view of any organisation.

  • Review of Map Engine

    Geospatial data is gaining popularity with cloud technologies and iOT (Internet of Things). With mobile devices, this data have become ubiquitous and must have. However, getting this data to traditional desktop is still progressing slowly as you usually require a map engine to be integrated. I did a quick review with some popular map engine to see if I can setup a simple map page within a day.

    Review Steps and Criterion
    1. Google search of popular Maps with the key words – online maps, maps API, maps engine.
    2. Maps reviews on setup and costs.
    3. Maps that can be used in China, because majority of popular maps are blocked in China.
    4. Build a simple web page and access the map API to query address by Lat/Lon, also known as Reverse Geocoding API.
    Shortlisted Maps
    1. Google Map
    2. Baidu (In mandarin)
    3. Amap (In mandarin)
    4. HERE
    Google Map

    Plus point of Google Map is the common information found for its API. However, Login and credit card information is now compulsory to use Google API. There is also no secure way to access China maps and you may need Google.cn.

    Baidu

    The login keep asking for a local China phone number, assuming it is for WeChat. You will need strong mastery of Chinese as it seems geared only for China market. No pricing is stated.

    Amap

    Like Baidu, the entire experience is similar. Login with China mobile is being asked and integrated with WeChat. No English support is provided and pricing is also not stated.

    HERE

    HERE map is an upcoming map engine by a consortium of cars manufacturers. The documents are straightforward and easy to implement. There are news that they are covering China. So, it will be a map engine to look out.

    Summary and Mixed Map

    Overall, China coverage are limited to China map engines. Google and HERE are pretty well supported for the rest of world. There will need to be detailed testing on the accuracy as these are high level evaluations. From organisation view, it will be cost effective to support a single map engine. However, due to country constraints, there may be a need for multiple map engine support,

  • Architectural Thinking 101

    I recently took an Enterprise Architecture (EA) course and find Architectural Thinking very refreshing. It is worth to provide my two cents worths and an introductory view because many of us are caught up in the details of system development.

    What is Architectural Thinking?

    The first thing that Architectural Thinking that comes into my mind is the Building Architecture. Like a building, architect plans and design the construction and utilisation of the space within a site. There are also considerations of human elements, environment and aesthetics. Similarly, Architectural Thinking is the mindset to consider the design of business and IT domains. It also align the business goals and strategic drivers so that IT landscapes can adapt and respond to changes.

    Challenges

    Theoretically, Architectural Thinking is a perfect approach to transform your organisation into a architectural centric fit between business and technology. In reality, the transformation is complex due to disparate data, stakeholders, system and environments. The course outlines a systematic blueprint to addresses these challenges and implement Architecture Thinking with Architecture Development Method (ADM). Another way is to adopt Cloud technologies to manage your architectural framework (see Helping Enterprise Architecture (EA) be Agile with Cloud).

    Checklist

    Overall, a simple checklist is sufficient to check if your organisation is ready for Architectural Thinking.

    1. Do you have an Enterprise Centric strategy?
    2. Do you have blueprint Architectural Diagram for business and IT?
    3. Do you have stakeholder maps?
    4. Is there guidelines in developing your Architecture?

    For many cases, your organisation could be in stage of discovery in this digital transformation era. It may be worth to be systematic and consider investing your resources with Architectural Thinking. You could also check the reference source – Combining Design Thinking with Architectural Thinking.

  • Coopetition the New Economy

    Competitions are a thing of a past as consumers became flicker minded and switch cost is lower due to advent of technologies e.g. having different video conferencing application in a mobile. Monopolies discourage innovations and create unfair pricing for consumers. Many countries even have laws regarding competition to prevent creation of monopoly e.g. Singapore Competition Act. A new breed of organization emerges where competitors works in cooperation across different regions. A world of coopetitors!

    What is Coopetition?

    Coopetition is a fusion of cooperation and competition. In today’s economy, monopolies are frown upon and even illegal. It is not unusual for competitors to collaborate and cooperate for mutual benefits. Many examples existed such as airlines alliances with their codeshare connection, automotive partnership that owes HERE maps and Alibaba network of merchants, suppliers and eCommerce shops.

    What Cooperate yet Compete?

    All these coopetitors have a common objective to increase competitive advantage, enlarge market share, extend market reach and coverage with the consumers. This would create a network effect globally as a single organization will take a longer period to achieve this. Moreover, technologies have disrupted barriers and amplified threats of market entrants to traditional industries. By sharing, these organisations can create greater value in combating these entrants. Vice versa, new startups can allied together to take on existing incumbents. Without coopeting, these objectives would be impossible.

    COVID-19 Effects on Coopetition

    Perhaps the best case study of Coopetition comes from COVID-19 pandemic. Covid Vaccines have taken less than a year to be developed compared to several years for a typical vaccine. It will be impossible unless information is shared and collaborated among old foes and competitors. Another example is the collaboration between transportation providers, Food and Beverages (F&B) businesses and food delivery during COVID-19 lockdown like ComfortDelivery in Singapore. Will your organization be mature to coopete against this new breed of alliances?

  • Customer Experience 101

    Customer Experience (CX) is an emerging trend in many organisations. Sales, customer service and customer support are being renamed into Customer Experience teams. However, are we ready for CX?

    What is Customer Experience?

    Customer Experience is a holistic management of customer touchpoints from infancy to “forever”. It is an integrated view to provide a positive and lifelong effect on overall consumer satisfaction. The experience combine the cognitive and affective state of mind to increase expectations beyond the customers needs. In layman terms, it is to make customers so happy and satisfied that they engage in a lifelong relationship with the organization. One such company that comes to mind would be Apple.

    Why Customer Experience (CX)?

    CX sounds like an idealist view and one wonders how this differs from a combination of presale, sales, customer support and customer service. As mentioned in my previous study of overall consumer satisfaction, there are different aspects of satisfaction components in consumer. All these satisfaction parts may lie in different parts of the organisation and beyond like third party vendors and logistics providers. CX aims to unite network together from these disparate systems, service providers and organisations into a single integrated experience.

    Reality Bites

    In reality, how many of us have really experience CX? It is common for loyal customers to be let down by services that are beyond the organisation such as third party logistics and vendors because these information are not shared. For many years, Customer Relationship Management (CRM) have been touted as the game changer for capturing customer relationships to achieve similar objectives. CX may suffer from the same verdict as CRM if many of these customer data remains in silo. Data analytics, machine learning and many other cloud technologies looks promising to change and make CX a success. By then, what will CX be rename to?

  • Implementing Waterfall Agile

    Agile software practices can be implemented with discipline in majority of projects. In many organizations, the project approval and management remains in Waterfall mode. So, how should you approach to be Agile within the Waterfall culture?

    Agile within Waterfall

    As mention in my previous article, it is a challenge to apply Agile within a Waterfall organisation. As opposed with many bias, Agile is a very practical and disciplined practice. Implementation of Agile will first require a mindset change for the team. However, some teammates are so entrenched to Waterfall approach that Agile becomes a drastic change. Similarly, organisations are resistant if you choose to declare the usage of Agile in your project management. So, a neat approach is the ubiquitous introduction of Agile using its techniques. Two such methods are timeboxing and product backlog.

    Timeboxing

    Timeboxing is a technique to complete the assigned tasks within a fixed time. It is used in Scrum as daily meeting and sprints. Waterfall have a longer time horizon, fixed milestone and timeline. There are similarities of timebox and Waterfall. You can easily apply timeboxing in your development team to score quick wins from Agile. Over time, you will learn how to timebox and coexist within Waterfall plan.

    Product Backlog

    Product backlog is an artifact of Scrum that can be utilised for Waterfall. It is very similar to feature list, requirements, issues or parking lots. Unlike Waterfall, Agile consolidates anything required by the product into a single backlog. Priority and business value are set as well so that business and IT have a single view of the product backlog.

    Be Realistic

    You must be mindful to be realistic in your Agile expectations. Go for baby steps if your organization is traditionally Waterfall. Telling your management that there will be no project manager due to Scrum would scare the “hell” out of them. Be bold to apply and fuse components of Agile within the Waterfall cycle. Like Agile, you need to keep iterating to arrive at your definition of “done”. You need self reflect and benchmark your success of implementing Agile. In time, you will reap the benefits as more Agile components replaces Waterfall. Lastly, be resilient and do not give up as Agile is here to stay.

  • Green Logistics 101

    Green is the new fab now. Singapore has just announced its Green Plan 2030. Green Technologies, Green Fuel and Green Logistics are some of the futuristic areas that will be gaining popularity as sustainability become a concern for Earth survival.

    Source: Google Trends
    What is Green Logistics?

    Green Logistics refers to the flow of logistics that are conducted in a sustainable way with the purpose of reducing the carbon footprint. The other key objective of Green Logistics is to focus on the transportations of goods in order to minimize the impact on environment.

    How Cloud helps Green Logistics

    Green Logistics is not new. It is an ideal way to save the world but languish for many years as conceptual ideas because of higher consumer costs to be Green. The arrival of Cloud technologies have revived the interest of Green Logistics with the sole purpose of Greater Good i.e to commoditize carbon cost using Cloud computing.

    Commoditizationc of Carbon

    Carbon are being commoditised and implemented as Carbon Tax in many countries. The aim is twofold, to reduce carbon gas emissions and passed this carbon cost to consumers through taxes. For the first time, Carbon can be measured and be quantified like commodity. Higher carbon will translate higher cost for the consumers. Carbon heavy industries like energy sector is the first to be impacted. Similar for logistics, majority of carbon tax will derive from fuels.

    Future of Green Logistics

    The measurement on the consumptions of carbon will spur customers and supply chain providers to offer carbon services or Green Logistics. Cloud technologies will be adopted to capture these carbon usages. The first adoption will be the iOT of fuel in vehicles. Next, massive digitisation of data such as weather and traffic conditions will be captured for route and load optimization. With these information, Machine Learning (ML) can provide detailed analytics on how reduce Carbon Tax without increasing consumer costs. It will be exciting to see Green roles or Green Technologist in Logistics sectors. Green is the new Change, let us embrace it!

  • Agile POC with Cloud

    It is a fast life now. Setting up server used to be months compared to minutes of provisioning one in Cloud. First, you have to prepare and renovate a server room, if you do not have one. Then, the physical server may take weeks to arrive. After that, you have to purchase the required licences for the server operating system (OS). Installations and configurations will take another week or so before the server is ready for usage.

    As application owner, it is a time consuming to conduct new proof of concept (POC) by going through all these steps to acquire a server. In many cases, we skip POC and move directly to project phase to save on these lead time. Now, POC can be easily implemented with Agile by Cloud. It is time to brace ourselves to a brave new world!

    Why POC

    The emergence of Cloud accelerates how we can do our proof of concept (POC). With the difficulty of getting hardware, POC is often avoided for conservative organizations. It is less risky to stick to proven technology and applications. Waterfall process also slow down the process as having POC adds cost and time. While these are common excuses of not having POC, the advantages outweighs the cons for new technology like Cloud. This is because POC will lower uncertainty and risk by exploration in real environment for many stakeholders.

    Agile POC with Cloud

    Cloud technologies have changed the mindset towards POC. The constraints of acquiring hardware are nearly eliminated and thus solving a huge lead time issue. Server provisioning templates or machine images can also be setup to iterate POC quickly with ease. The best timing is the adoption of Agile methodologies and Cloud technologies that fits the implementation of POC.

    To POC or not to POC

    From stakeholders view, there seems little disadvantages not to conduct POC to mitigate risks for new technologies. Business can evaluate the relevance with minimum costs before making decisions to invest in full implementation. Information Technology (IT) team can review new capabilities without plunging into unknown from preparation with POC. To POC or not to POC, you can easily decide with Agile and Cloud.

  • Book Review: Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies: 2

    Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies: 2 by Jim Collins and Jerry I Porras is a good bedtime read of organisation culture and case studies of successful organisations. No spoilers will be revealed in this review.

    1. This book provides case studies approach in understanding organisation cultures and successful leaders.
    2. It is a smooth read and not heavy with theories.
    3. There are comparison studies done with real organisations. This gives you an introductory insight to various multinational (MNC).
    4. One of reasons which I know of this book is its focus one organisational cultures. Organisational cultures comes from people or leader who created a success company.
    5. Creating a company and sustaining a company is highlighted in this book.
    6. Lastly, you get to know many MNC and other related business books.

    Overall, this is a pleasant read of business book that will guide you into the world of MNCs. Lots of success examples are quoted ranging from leadership to organisational cultures. While there are critics of the book on lack of research depths, I feel that this book is geared towards the general audiences who are new to business books. After all, it is also one of my first business books I read.