THE desire to strike out on your own, or the impetus to quit your current job and follow your dream comes in what many describe as a moment of inspiration.
Or for the founders of Telemoney and, presumably, many other enterprising individuals in our country, over a late night supper.
"A lot of us found that we had good careers in what we were doing but we also had the motivation to set up and develop something in the market that we felt had a lot of potential. And also to do it in a sector where we felt had a need," says Ng Fook Sun, chief executive officer of Systems@Work, the company responsible for the mobile payment service Telemoney.
Philosophically, the biggest competitors are people who have the desire to have mobility in their payments but are not willing to change. If you continue to buy a scratch card at the supermarket or if you pay your bills by taking them to SingPost, that is our competition because we are trying to do the same thing electronically. Change is the competition. - Mr Ng
Telemoney is essentially a server-based platform that allows customers to make any form of payment through online or mobile means. Founded in 2000, the service is now responsible for various payments including the online top-up of ez-link cards and facilitating those provided by leading banking institution, DBS.
"A lot of countries are advanced in this form of technology but what we have realised is that we are a niche company in the sense that we are not in the realm of mobile technology but in payment technology. While it is part of the financial services sector, it is a more focused segment of the industry," Mr Ng says.
Industry expertise is just what the four founders of Systems@Work have. Among them is a former general manager of Kodak, the co-founder of Creative Technology and a consultant from Andersen Consulting.
Looking back at the company's relatively young history, Mr Ng recounts that the road towards making payments mobile has not been as smooth sailing as many would expect in today's technological age.
"In Singapore and Asia, the online and mobile businesses have not really catapulted in the speed that we thought they would. It has picked up a bit here, but it is nowhere near the numbers that many thought it would be," he says.
Timing in a business like Telemoney is a very unpredictable factor, says Mr Ng, adding that it is not like traditional businesses where historical data are available to enable future growth and plans to be charted.
Competition in terms of rival firms is also seen as slight, although the founders of Telemoney witnessed a multitude of firms entering the mobile market some four years ago. Almost none of these would-be competitors is still active.
Instead, Mr Ng notes that the mindset of the people is the biggest hurdle facing Telemoney.
"Philosophically, the biggest competitors are people who have the desire to have mobility in their payments but are not willing to change. If you continue to buy a scratch card at the supermarket or if you pay your bills by taking them to SingPost, that is our competition because we are trying to do the same thing electronically. Change is the competition."
Identifying the particular niche segment of the market that the company wants to target seems instead to be the guiding principle for Telemoney, with the company not expanding the nature of its service to a very large extent.
"We want to identify one segment we want to get into and identify who is competing with us in that segment. Looking at the full spectrum of the payment industry, we probably would get a lot more achieved by looking at how it fits the consumer to adopt the new technology rather than looking over the fence and seeing who else is providing the same services," says Mr Ng.
It is not just in Singapore that Telemoney has been attempting to get people to sign up for more innovative forms of payment.
In 2005, Systems@Work entered into a joint venture with two other companies to establish Telemoney Asia, with the aim of bringing the service to Vietnam.
"The model in Vietnam seems to be working very well. Going to overseas markets needs a local partner that will do the required localisation and physical framework," says Mr Ng.
"We will then provide the technology and the business model required for the service to take root. We are currently working on a couple of discussions to bring this same model to other markets in South-east Asia, China and India."
This year alone, Systems@Work has embarked on a number of other joint ventures similar to Vietnam, in addition to a number of new local launches lined up for the rest of the year. These include a new service for DBS as well as a service called Busport.
With the volatility and dynamism of the technology industry, research and development can be seen to be critical to any technological service provider.
At the expense of current profitability, Systems@Work has in recent years been diverting revenue back towards improving and refining its core services.
"As of today, our business volume continues to grow. As the payment industry is mainly high-volume, low-margin based, our profit margins are quite thin. If we did not plough so much back into R&D, we would be profitable. As of today, we are not. However, we continue to believe that for the segment we are in, the potential is still very high," says Mr Ng.
An initial public offer is definitely on the cards, according to Mr Ng, based on what the company is trying to push through in terms of its business model and service innovation.
"I am absolutely sure that Telemoney will find its way down to the neighbourhood market," he says.
"Singapore is a ready market. It just needs some pieces of the equation to come together. When we see people at the neighbourhood store using our service, we will know Telemoney has achieved some semblance of success."
