Tridimas Sdn Bhd

High quality customer service and management can create customer loyalty. Customers are not only interested in the products and services offered, but the additional service elements received before and after sales play an important role in achieving maximum satisfaction.

Customers will be satisfied if the service provided is fast, error-free, easy to obtain, does not burden the customer and is accompanied by friendly and polite service. Managing Director of Tridimas Sdn Bhd, Mr. Rozaidi Ismail shares his experience.

Can you share the background of the business?
Tridmas Sdn Bhd (Tridimas) started its business operations in 2004 as a company that provides solutions related to Information & Communication Technology (ICT), in Shah Alam, Selangor.

With a background in ICT, I started this business by partnering with several companies to enable Tridimas to leverage the latter’s experiences and track records in obtaining medium and large-sized projects from various sectors.

In the early stages of this business, Tridimas was involved in the system integrator field where we bought IT products of various brands including from the United States of America (USA) and China. Then, we did the installation and rendered maintenance of the products.

For your information, we have 15 full-time staff. We also hire additional staff through our partners based on the skills and expertise needed.

What are the main challenges in this business?
The relatively slow global supply chain causes delivery time to be somewhat affected and we need to manage this as quickly as possible so that existing customers remain satisfied.

Limited working capital turnover is also a major factor. Industry players must fork out a large sum in advance to purchase the required products and do the installation.

This working capital will only be recovered once the client makes the payment upon product delivery. Imagine if we get a project that requires a huge capital but to decline the project because we do not have enough capital would be a great loss.

Other challenges include the foreign currency exchange rate. For instance, the products purchased are from the USA and China. If the value of the ringgit falls, it will affect the company's finances and income as imported products become more expensive.

How does Tridimas ensure existing customers remain loyal?
To date, our client base has been a mix of the government sector, Government Linked Companies (GLCs) and the private sector.

This allows us to reduce our dependency on sources of income from the government sector alone.

The relationship with the customers is very important – always check in on the customers to ensure that they are satisfied with our products and services. A good relationship with customers helps us a lot. For example, when we know the direction of our customers' companies, we are able to give the appropriate and relevant recommendations.

In addition, we also constantly analyse the current needs of our customers in line with technological developments. If there are any technological changes that could benefit our customers, we will propose the recommendations accordingly.

If not, chances are we may eventually lose our customers to other competitors. This will definitely be a loss to Tridimas.

Can you share Tridimas future plans?
We want to diversify our source of income. As you already know, ICT business is very broad, which comprises, amongst others, network and security infrastructure services, application development and system integration. We may look into exploring some of these areas in the future.

What is your advice to new entrepreneurs?
Firstly, make sure you have knowledge in the business field/ industry you want to venture into. Also make sure you always learn from people around you and also attend related courses.

I believe knowledge and learning through other people's experiences is the key to success.

Then you must have high resilience, because when you start a business, the challenges and expectations are very high.