KMD

Business Model

How KMD creates value for customers

Management / Senior Leaders actively seek innovative ideas
Manage and Monitor
Innovation Culture
Coordinating activities among departments
Research and Development
Operational processes and KPIs
Audits and Reviews
Customers’ satisfaction

Innovation policy

KMD Group of Companies has an innovation policy framework to promote innovation throughout the organization, whereby KMD Management has put in place a mechanism whereby customers’ feedback is accepted through a variety of different channels, and employees are encouraged to submit their new ideas for improvement and opportunities directly to a designated member of the top management, who will discuss potential ideas with other members of the top management, and then give approval for ideas to be implemented. Employees are motivated to contribute their innovative ideas, by giving them a convenient mechanism to do so, and those who submit potentially viable innovative ideas are rewarded with recognition, acknowledgement, empowerment to spearhead the idea, and financial incentives for successfully implementing the ideas.

Management / Senior Leaders actively seek innovative ideas

KMD Group’s innovation policy ensures that there is a mechanism to receive input for innovative ideas from all levels of the organization ranging from entry staff level all the way to the management, who act as KMD’s multiple touch points with the industry, customers and competitors, and thus with different perspectives and different ideas for innovation, from operation level ideas all the way to strategic level ideas. These ideas are open for proposal at any time, but as a formal procedure, every single KMD employee is required to submit new ideas for improvement in any aspect of the work environment surrounding their job role, during their promotion exam. These formal proposals are reviewed by a designated member of the top management, and ideas with potential are discussed amongst top management, and ideas that are approved are forwarded to the corresponding department or personnel to be implemented. As mentioned in the previous point, employees are given empowerment and ownership of researching and implementing their ideas, and management will facilitate and support the successful implementation of the idea, in terms of both operational and financial aspects. Apart from relying on all employees in every layer of the organization, there are also dedicated research and business development teams within each business division of KMD Group, whose formal job role is essentially researching, developing and implementing new ideas for product and service innovation, by coordinating with cross-functional teams across the Corporate Group.

How does the company manage and monitor

If an innovation idea/project is approved, then based on the proposed budget, KMD management will allocate a budget that will cover the financing of the project. Innovation projects are mostly cross-functional projects, where coordination between multiple departments across the KMD Group is required. Therefore, to make these human resources available, management has set up dedicated personnel and teams within each business division of KMD Group, who will help to research, develop and implement the approved idea and budget, and to facilitate cross-functional coordination. Management will give empowerment and autonomy to the team spearheading the innovation project. The dedicated research and business development teams will use a pre-approved project plan as a baseline to measure the progress of implementing the innovation project, and if necessary, project-specific KPIs are used. Management will monitor and check with the dedicated research and business development teams, to ensure timely progress of innovation projects via regular daily or weekly communication checkpoints.

Innovation Culture

To develop an innovation culture, the management has set in place formal culture aspects such as SOPs and policies to reinforce the organization’s informal culture aspects such as being empowered to think freely and work autonomously, and foster an overall innovation-driven culture throughout the organization. KMD adopts a multi-faceted approach to developing innovation culture, and thus it is not just for new products, but even improvements in operations, workflow, policies and processes are also welcome. Most of the examples of promoting a culture of innovation are already mentioned in the above questions. In terms of pursuing strategic opportunities, and determining whether they are “intelligent risks” or not, KMD conducts research on these ideas, to ensure that the business model aspect is feasible (operationally possible in terms of resources), viable (financially possible in terms of breaking even and profiting) and desirable (possible in terms of having demand and fulfilling customer needs); before KMD decides KMD takes the idea further into implementation stage. In terms of workforce climate, KMD measures it using employee satisfaction and morale. KMD has mentor-mentee systems, and fostering a family workplace environment, to encourage employees to be open and express their difficulties.

Coordinating activities among departments

For successfully carrying out an innovation project to launch new programs/products requires cross-functional coordination between different units and departments across KMD Group. Starting from idea inception, all employees across the organization are encouraged to bring forward any new ideas for improvement and are rewarded for doing so. This ensures that through the line employees, the organization will take into account customer’s requirements as well, while also putting in place ways for customers to give their feedback, by both actively requesting customers to fill up feedback surveys and passively accepting feedback from dedicated online channels as well as offline channels. Then, thirdly, management and business intelligence activities will also actively seek out industrial and competitor trends to explore new potential innovation opportunities. For the day-to-day operations, all the above have policies and Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) put in place and made aware to all employees, and their respective supervisors and managers will hold weekly or monthly meetings to review these, and then biweekly meetings with top management to take them further.

Company’s expansion plans / activities

Established in 1986, KMD Group has been successful for well over 3 decades due to our excellence in operational stability efforts. Moreover, KMD Group started with the education business, and over the decades, it has expanded into distribution, retail, enterprise solutions, systems integration, and OEM; and lately has been focusing much of its efforts on even more growth opportunities. For the education sector, KMD Institute has been expanding to offer a wider variety of new courses and educational programs including eLearning and mLearning, STEM and STEAM, Robotics, Game Development, Industry 4.0 technology courses such as AI and Machine Learning, short term vocational courses, business-related courses, MBA and Master’s Degree Programs, etc., in addition to our already diverse portfolio of education programs ranging from basic computer application courses up to International Degree level courses. Apart from new product/program development, we are also leveraging our existing products/programs to expand into other geographic regions, by leveraging our huge network of over 140 branch and accredited partner centres under the KMD corporate umbrella.

Research and Development

The R&D process for new innovation projects starts with idea inception, either from proposals by employees or through business opportunities scouting by research and business development teams, then after the idea is approved and budget is allocated by top management, the corresponding research & business development team will research, develop and implement the innovation project, which will lead to new products and services being tested and launched into market.

The research and business development team is the first touch point to initiate an innovation project. They are the focal point who will design the business model, do the initial market research and test market demand, and pivot as needed to ensure feasibility of new projects. The insights gathered from the initial research will feed into the program/product design to meet customer requirements. After the business model is validated, the product/program will be launched into the market. To do the above activities, they have to coordinate heavily with marketing communications department and operation departments from the point of inception until launch and ongoing operations of the program.

Operational processes and KPIs

KMD Institute and Training Centre had practiced its own SOP (Standard Operation Procedures), Codes of Conduct, Rules & Regulations for Quality Management System, and already had been approved as ISO 9001:2015 Quality Management System since last several years ago. KMD Quality Manual document had been written and implemented.

SOP (Standard Operation Procedures), Rules and Regulations, Codes of Conduct had been defined within KMD Group of Companies, and day-to-day monitoring, daily reports, weekly meeting, ad hoc meeting, weekly reports, monthly reports, quarterly review, year-end summary were done to improve work processes, to improve products/services and performance, to enhance core competencies and reduce variability. Newcomer staff trainings, new product and service trainings, regular staff development trainings were scheduled, implemented, reviewed, to incorporate new technology, organization knowledge, product excellence, customer satisfaction & value, agility of KMD products, services and processes.

Some of KMD Key Performance Indicators KPIs include: Revenue, Market Share, Customer Profitability, Reach (e.g. KMD’s various kinds of advertisement: Journal/Mag/News Paper /FM Radio/Web/Facebook), Awareness, Gross Profit, Market Share Index, Share of Customer, Net Profit, Net Sales Contribution,- Customer Acquisition Costs (e.g. KMD Advertisement costs), Incremental Sales, Target Market Fit, Market Demand, Market Penetration (e.g. KMD Franchise Centers all around Myanmar), Cost per Lead (e.g. KMD Advertisement costs), Promotion Profit, Quotation Speed (e.g. KMD quotations to Gov/NGO/Enterprise), Customer Lifetime Value (e.g. World First, High Achiever, Roll of Honor from NCC, UK for KMD Institute), Recognition (e.g. NCC, SQA awards), Return on Customer (e.g. How many 1st-year students continue to attend 2nd year), Repeat (Retention) Rate, New Customer Gain (e.g. New students of 1st-year), Transaction per Customer (e.g. How many courses a student attended), Pageviews (e.g. KMD Facebook, website), Marketing Cost per Unit, Clickthrough Rate (e.g. KMD Facebook’s Like & Share), Market Growth, Segment Contribution (Profitability), Net Price, Net Promoter Score, etc. Implementability of those KPIs were monitored and reviewed, and amendments were made as needed.

SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Time based) Key Performance Indicators KPIs had been considered for KMD, and these include: Revenue, Market Share, Customer Profitability, Reach (e.g. KMD’s various kinds of advertisement: Journal/Mag/News Paper /FM Radio/Web/Facebook), Awareness, Gross Profit, Market Share Index, Share of Customer, Net Profit, Net Sales Contribution,- Customer Acquisition Costs (e.g. KMD Advertisement costs), Incremental Sales, Target Market Fit, Market Demand, Market Penetration (e.g. KMD Franchise Centers all around Myanmar), Cost per Lead (e.g. KMD Advertisement costs), Promotion Profit, Quotation Speed (e.g. KMD quotations to Gov/NGO/Enterprise), Customer Lifetime Value (e.g. World First, High Achiever, Roll of Honor from NCC, UK for KMD Institute), Recognition (e.g. NCC, SQA awards), Return on Customer (e.g. How many 1st-year students continue to attend 2nd year), Repeat (Retention) Rate, New Customer Gain (e.g. New students of 1st-year), Transaction per Customer (e.g. How many courses a student attended), Pageviews (e.g. KMD Facebook, website), Marketing Cost per Unit, Clickthrough Rate (e.g. KMD Facebook’s Like & Share), Market Growth, Segment Contribution (Profitability), Net Price, Net Promoter Score, etc. Implementability of those KPIs were monitored and reviewed, and amendments were made as needed.

Audits and Reviews

By means of regular audits and reviewed by management, the overall cost of KMD business operations had been monitored and controlled. Products and services quality had been controlled by planning, operations, audits and reviews, remedial actions and prevention. KMD had set KPI (Key Performance Indicators) based on different department/sector of KMD group, different nature of products & services, different customer groups & market segments, as quarterly or as needed basis, and achievement of those KPIs were monitored and reviewed, and amendment of KPIs were made based on situation and implement ability. Performance of KMD competitors were observed through their activities, market situation and trends.

Customers and customers’ satisfaction

KMD Group of Companies has variety of customers from KMD Institute, KMD Sales, KMD Mobiles, KMD Enterprise and so on. KMD has records of those customers (such as invoice, vouchers, registration, enrollment, installation of fees, servicing, etc.) when they have transactions with KMD. Feedback and suggestions from customers had been accepted via different media (mailbox, email, phone, social media, etc.). And, based on KMD internal group analysis of customers related data and trends of local market, KMD can identify and determine customer groups, customer needs and preferences, market segments, and future expansion strategies. Competition in the industry were observed via their activities and products on the market, researching of market trends and competitors analysis by KMD internal team, marketing and online team.

Customers’ satisfaction on KMD products and services were obtained via feedback, suggestions from customers, surveys to customers, audits of transactions, and measured via research, review and analysis of relevant customers data and transactions. Based on revenues, life span and marketability of products, trends of existing market, forecast and prediction of foreseeable market and potential future markets, KMD tried its best to meet and exceed customers’ expectations and promote further engagements via KMD management strategies and decisions.