Current situation and action to plan for ascendas protrade singapore tech park

Thuy, sales and marketing manager, who spent her time to exchange information, joined the interview and help me realize problem symptoms, get the potential causes and find company proble

UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS HO CHI MINH CITY

International School of Business

-

CURRENT SITUATION AND ACTION TO PLAN FOR ASCENDAS- PROTRADE SINGAPORE TECH PARK

ID: 22130076

MASTER OF BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION

Supervisors: Dr Tran Ha Minh Quan

And Dr Nguyen Thi Nguyet Que

Ho Chi Minh City – Year 2016

Table of Contents Acknowledgements 1

Abstract 2

Chapter 1: Problem Identification 3

Company Introduction and Background 3

Problem Symptoms 4

Problem Identification 6

Verifying The Existence of The Problem 8

The Importance of The Problem 9

Potential causes 11

Cause and Effect Map 15

Chapter 2: Alternative Solutions 16

Root cause 16

Alternative Solutions 18

Establish relationship with strategic partners and retain customers’ relationship 19

Applying technology to business 19

Penetrate the market deeply 21

Chapter 3: Selected Solutions and Implementation Plan 23

Selected Solutions 23

Implementation Plan 24

Chapter 4: Supporting Information 27

Transcript 1: Interview with Sales and Marketing Manager to get the symptoms of the problem 27

Transcript 2: Interview sales and marketing staff to find obstacles they face up in their sale and marketing activities 30

Transcript 3: Interview Mr Han – General Director and Ms Eriko – Head of Sales and Marketing Department to find out the central problem 33

Questionnaire 1: Survey to confirm the central problem 40

Questionnaire 2: Survey to confirm the root cause 47

Questionnaire 3: Tenants Feedback 47

Literature Reviews Summary 49

Conclusion 52

References 53

Acknowledgements

This study builds on reality of a joint venture Vietnam Singaporean real-estate company which I am working for I should therefore begin my acknowledgements to my colleagues and partners who supported and provided useful information so that I can analyze and find out the root cause of company problems to complete this paper

Acknowledgment for permission to use materials and data from Mr Han, the general director of Ascendas-Protrade Co., Ltd It’s my grateful to Ms Thuy, sales and marketing manager, who spent her time to exchange information, joined the interview and help me realize problem symptoms, get the potential causes and find company problems

I am also indebted to my supervisors; Dr Tran Ha Minh Quan and Dr Nguyen Thi Nguyet Que, for their valuable comments, instructions and advices to help me

understand the thesis structure more fully and complete this thesis

I also express my appreciation to the members of the group and staff of ISB for their friendliness and enthusiastic My thanks, too, to my family and friends for their motivation and supports

Abstract

The existence of appropriate marketing strategies in industrial land lease is

generally attributed to the successful of deal close and occupancy rate in industrial real estate field This study is identifying the Ascendas-Protrade Co., Ltd.’s core problem, finding and prioritizing capacities as well as examining the use of high value added

strategies to allow firm get higher performance then enable pushing Ascendas-Protrade Singapore Tech Park occupancy rate Key members of the company have been selected to respond a questionnaire and their answers have been use as data for analyzing to figure out the company’s problem From the point of view of experts, Board of Director and managers of the firm, the results of the interview inclines toward strategic marketing and integrated customer solutions Therefore, they deserve special attention in relation to brand, marketing campaign and image deal with market communication that aims to strengthen the brand, the image and the reputation, to increase the company's awareness and to promote the customer's emotional engagement In this study, raising solutions reflect various capacities of understanding customers’ needs, product differentiation, and competitive advantage so that such solutions can associate and align to corporate

strategies to meet the firm’s challenges and goals in upcoming years The study provides practitioner insights into the practices and trends in the use of valuable strategies in

industrial land market In determining appropriate marketing plan for industrial lease, many factors need to be weighed as to the influence on a particular subject

land-properly

Chapter 1: Problem Identification Company Introduction and Background

As an Asia's leading provider of total business space solutions with more than

30 years of experience Ascendas specializes in master planning, developing, managing and marketing IT parks, industrial & logistics parks, business parks, science parks, hi-specs facilities, office and retail spaces Leveraging on its track record and experience, Ascendas has introduced new business space concepts such as integrated communities and solutions which seamlessly combine high-quality business, lifestyle, retail and

hospitality spaces to create conducive human-centric work-live-play-learn environments

Ascendas has established a strong regional presence, settle up Ascendas Vietnam Co., Ltd in Vietnam and cooperated with a Vietnamese state-own company, Protrade, to invest and develop an industrial park in Southern Vietnam, named Ascendas-Protrade Singapore Tech Park (APSTP), primarily serving multi-national companies, leading local companies and research institutions The project is set within 500 ha and consists of 6 phases in which the area of phase 1 and phase 2 is 150 ha, fully completed infrastructure and launched into market to sell It offers a vibrant work-live-play-learn industrial hub that blends high quality business space and reliable solutions with a conducive business lifestyle and provides customers with excellent range of options for industries in

electronics, precision engineering, IT, pharmaceutical, food and beverage and general industries

There are plenty of competitors running their businesses in this industry in

Vietnam Some of them are successful and assessed as mature industrial parks such as

VSIP, Amata, Long Duc, Nhon Trach, Kizuna, etc while some other parks operated for long time but their positions in the market really matter The most appeared failure is low growth rate APSTP is one of them and is a perfect case to study on this kind of failure

Problem Symptoms

According to sales reports and financial statements from the date the project opened for sale (2007 to 2016), it shown that company has spent a lot of money to run marketing campaigns for branding and attract prospects to push sales but it still couldn’t meet break-even point and the project can be sold to another development while it probably made profit in the first 5 years as planned During 9 years, from 2007 until

2016, the occupancy rate of the first 2 phases of the project is about 36% They encountered an issue of pushing land sales though their team is skillful and worked extremely hard and enthusiastic

After interviewing financial controller, sales manager and staff, parameters were given as

Table 1: Sales Target and Sales Actual from 2014 to 2016 of the project

The actual sale compare with the plan is a big gap In 2014, project target sale is

56.7 ha while actual sale is 12.5, equivalent to 22% of expected goal The sales volume

is very low despite of the team’s effort The value of contract is not big, below 3 ha The project hardly finds a queen bee to attract other supplementary industries to build up a supply chain Big customers often get aware of APSTP at the last minutes of their final decision Normally, oversea investors get information of industrial parks in Vietnam through consultants or agents website or meeting and have them help in analysis before going further steps Ascendas-Protrade hasn’t built strong and close relationships with agents, consultants as well as advertised the project on their websites

Besides, working with marketing department (Head of Marketing Department, Marketing Manager and Marketers) to get more information, a collection of data was given hereunder:

Table 2: A&P Budget FY2016 (Provided by Marketing Department)

Annually, the marketing department spends USD 200,000 on marketing

campaigns for investment promotion activities and hosting However, the outcome

obtained is not satisfactory and the team doesn't have enough qualified leads According

to transcript 1, they stated that the team worked very hard with passion and enthusiasm, applied to many channels to market the products, on an average, there were about 14 prospects came to visit the project each month but the real buyer is just a few Asking of

which channels to approach prospects, the Head of Marketing Department shared that, they signed contracts with International Property Companies (CBRE, Savills, Colliers, etc.) sub-brokers to get more chance to increase leads and customers However, this channel is very week Besides, the number of 14 prospects visiting APSTP each month derives from their relationship with associations, the real demand is nearly equal to zero and the name of the project is really not familiar with them Each year, company set up balance-scored-card to monitor their activities and target The prospects they expect to come to their site is 175 per year They spent a lot of money to host groups of investors from consulates and associations to reach the site visit target but the contracts signed is just 2-3 each year and the land plot sold is not big

Compare with other competitors in the same industry like VSIP, Long Hau, the sales volume of APSTP is much lower and slower Besides, there isn’t any local investor locates in APSTP Although there’s a budget for marketing activities, they don’t get high achievements of sales and awareness, for instance, when a consultant or partner of them take prospects to APSTP, the prospects know Amata, VSIP, ect but do not know this project Each year, they tried to find more channels to approach more prospects but they were still caught in a vicious circle

Problem Identification

Entering Vietnam market at the end of 2007, one year later, they faced the

difficulty of economic recession At that time, Ascendas-Protrade was a young company without strong relationships with relative partners, agents and government; they couldn’t

find their first customers Moreover, they were lack of knowledge of nation culture and local market to catch up with other strong competitors in industry

Asking more about company marketing activities, a fact is that the firm has budget

to do marketing but they break the plan They have an amount of money for visual

branding and advertising but they didn’t use it, they take it to events, exhibition This leads to serious consequences; no one knows what APSTP is and what its offerings Marketing supports a lot for sales According to Paswan, Blankson, & Guzman (2011), the key marketing objective is to meet prospects’ needs and aspirations; therefore, the firm should have appropriate strategies to enhance products and organization value

For events, exhibitions the company hosted, each year they organized six to ten investment promotions in many countries which the investment rate is high However, the result is not as expectation, the team spent a huge amount to obtain only one or two

prospects The direct consequence is waste money low outcome; the indirect consequence

is it makes the team frustrated Digital marketing and social media are not used to

promote their brand name in the market though for current trend, social media's effects can represent a revolution in communication (Patino, Pitta & Quinones, 2012) Their website is also out of date and lack of information Clearly, they haven’t had a proper marketing plan, haven’t created the awareness buzz in the consumer minds (Rios &

Riquelme, 2010) to gain the desired differential response Managing marketing channels

is very important for successful implementation of marketing strategy (Paswan et al., 2011) It can help ensure the effective and efficient flow of goods, information, and

revenue

Market penetration to understand the market and analyze it is very important A clear and logical market analysis identifies a long-term market potential and the most significant sources of market risk (Malizia & Howarth, 1995) Every marketer before building marketing strategy needs to understand deeply the market overview and grasps the market trend However, in Ascendas-Protrade, they didn’t pay attention to this

activity Each year they got 2 market reports from the head-quarter and the information is not enough to reflect the right situation of current market This can lead them not to propose a good sales and marketing strategy to promote their brand name and products

Through interviewing and data collection, a problem has been identified; their marketing plan is not proper and does not focus on right channels to get desired

prospects This study is to provide solutions in order for marketers to implement

marketing plan more effective and feasible to improve land sales

Verifying The Existence of The Problem

After diagnosing, the central problem is inappropriate marketing plan, to verify and confirm the existence problem, an interview with related party and a questionnaire has been made (see transcript 3 and questionnaire 1 in chapter 4) The questionnaire consists of 11 questions, the main content of the interview and survey focus on how the audiences feel and see about the marketing activities, information updated and events of the project Survey data are collected from associations, partners, agents, etc From the result, following the table 5 in chapter 4, about marketing activities, 37.6% of participants feel it poor, 33.8% think it’s lack of creative and 28.6% feel it’s normal though they give high appraisal for the professional of the team, 42.3% agrees that the team is professional

and 23.4% agrees the team is very professional Compare with previous year, the level of acknowledgement of project information is 46.2% the same and 38% Information to update to partners are also not enough, just 17% know well, 55.3% know the general information, 29.3% feels dissatisfied with marketing campaign and 46.9% feel not

impressive with upcoming events, 42.4% knows a little of the project, 15.2% knows the project very well Based on the above result, the project needs a better marketing plan

The Importance of The Problem

As a culture of Singapore based company, the pace of work is very speedy and load of information is fairly huge In a short time, employees have to process

information, filter to assign to appropriate purposes so that they can adapt with the high speed of economic growth and the information explosion During many years of

operation, the company’s members from junior to senior levels have spent a lot of their time and resources to push up their land sale and sale leads to come to the site However, though the team keeps trying to work very hard, the expected goal cannot be achieved and they felt fed up with the job The companies’ revenues stem from appropriate

strategies concerning market orientation, recognizing the different opportunities to offer differentiated products for the right market segment (Ribeiro, Brashear, Monteiro & Damazio, 2009) Without any good direction and strategic marketing campaigns, it can easily make employees depressed time after time The employees’ working motivation will be down or disappear and leads to high turnover rate If the firm cannot deploy

strategic marketing activities, they cannot create various business opportunities to get profits and survive in the market Customers need to understand the concept of the park,

feel the potential of the location as well as the integrated solutions that the site offers through strong marketing plan From that, the company can reinvest and develop new phases of the project, retain their business and innovate their products and services as well

According to Sengupta & Chattopadhyay (2006), stronger market orientation helps better business operation which creates satisfied customer base and improved

profitability Effective marketing strategies can enable the team apply marketing concepts

to their work to develop to appeal target market by positioning specific customers, help the company save their cost and focus on their target The team should periodically

evaluate and control their marketing strategies, measure the result and adjust accordingly

to boost their performance and outcomes

Appropriateness and feasibility of marketing plan might be considered

as the market offerings of a set of products and services and its corresponding prospects perception amongst its target segment (Sengupta & Chattopadhyay, 2006) Focusing on right approaches, offering excellent integrated customer solutions and unique products, marketing and sales staff of Ascendas-Protrade can obtain more potential prospects with minimum time and optimize their skills in negotiation to close deals Construct and using

an appropriate marketing plan is a critical element for business success (Shaw, 2012) It can help position brand of the firms and develop sales growth and market share,

moreover, it can coordinates company’s activities to maximize its profits, helps getting supports from other departments, makes sure all team members are aware of what each is doing Besides, it seems that the team has a compass in hand, a marketing research can be

carried out at the beginning stage to consider optimal target customers, observe

competitors’ activities and recognize what trends might be, and then base on this, they can understand the customers’ demands and how to differentiate their product or service from the competition They also easily set the right price for products and services based

on their findings in the market research or determine which marketing channels should account for to fit the sale plan

Managing marketing channels is critical for successful implementation of

marketing plan (Paswan et al., 2011) In fact, choosing the right channels can enhance the effect of implementing marketing plan Having proper and strong marketing plan,

departments in company can work closer and better with each other as they all work from the same plan Without right direction followed by a marketing plan, the more land the company owns the more loss they get as the land tenure decreases each year and the value of the amount they obtain is less They cannot optimize their service charge and the central water treatment plan is easy to be out of work Addition, the fewer tenants are in the park the lower interaction between tenants exists, hence, the owner cannot establish their planned model of industrial clusters and supportive industrial chain

Potential causes

From the reality, the reasons for the situation can be from many factors, yet when synthesize all situations and contexts; the cause is mainly of weak and inappropriate marketing plan The marketing plan outlines how a company will reach certain future goal It begins by setting realistic, obtaining objectives The most important things to

consider when developing a marketing plan is market research, competition analysis, market plan However, the company got failure of this and lead to low sales performance.

Potential cause 1: Failure to understand market

At the beginning joining the market, there weren’t any expert to analyse the local market They got the agent to do such job, however, the research given was quite general, lack of detailed information to help them understand market deeply Market research can help the company get greater insight from the market and meet their objectives The marketing research can provide an overall picture of the industry, competitors and

business environment; understanding of how market interactions will affect the project It

is very crucial as with good market research and analysis as a foundation, appraisals can

be used to help market participants make better decisions to implement marketing plan (Correl, 2003)

Potential cause 2: Failure to apply technology to business

Information has exploded, technology developed in a very fast pace, and today's marketing activities are impossible with the help of information technology (Berisha-Namani, 2013) Information technology is making possible and creating connections between businesses and organisations, support marketing activies too With

information technology, companies possess the potential to reach more customers,

introduce new products and services quickly, and collaborate with suppliers

and business partners from all over the world Through interview with Sales and

Marketing Departments, sadly, Ascendas-Protrade didn’t utilize this kind of mean

completely in their business Their website is poor and lack of information of products and services The channels they focus on normally are traditional channels and lack of modern ones such as digital channels Social media and digital marketing nearly exclude

in their budget and activities Nowadays, these channels are very important and are the number one assistant in helping furnish brand name and attract more customers With rigid working style, they omit taking initiatives into works

Potential cause 3: Failure to segment the market

Ascendas-Protrade develops their project base on the work-live-play-learn concept and they try to create integrated customer solutions and professional working

environment as one of their unique selling points for their products However, the

concept has been raised but how to get right prospects is still the hard question they need

to find the answer to find a way

According to Peters (1993), one of the steps to implement marketing plan is to segment the market, choose the right customers the company is aiming to How to get people know about the project, can the customers in the segmentation be reached? It’s very difficult for the company as they are lack of market analysis and research hence they define their target so broadly Through the interview, the company approach customers via events, exhibitions, roadshow, networking but there are not many potential prospects come from these channels

Potential cause 4: Failure to communicate with right intermediaries

A fact has been shown after interviewing company’s staff and Sales and

Marketing Departments, due to the characteristics of the industry, selected channels of customer approach has been applied The investors from oversea usually find a consultant

in the country they intend to invest to investigate and examine all required aspects for them Therefore, staff from industrial park should connect to consultants, agencies to introduce and advertise their project Unfortunately, the sales and marketing team hasn’t established a strong network with agents, sub-brokers, associations to get in-time

information to approach new leads

According to Simoes & Mason (2012), what an organisation wants to achieve will affect the type of relationships it needs to establish and the way they are developed Indeed, to get the sales leads and close the deal, the company should establish

relationship with strategic partners who can connect them with real customers Protrade has signed contract with sub-brokers, international property companies,

Ascendas-agencies, build relationship with banks and associations However, the relationships are not strong and close enough In an inter-organisational context, collaboration relationship between business to business is vital The sales and marketing team didn’t pay attention

to collaborate with international associations (Amcham, Eurocham, Thai Associations, Japanese Business Associations, Singapore Business Group, etc.) and local associations (VCCI, Vietnam Textile, packaging association, etc.), so the relationships are not strong enough for associations to think of APSTP if they have potential investors.Dyer & Singh (1998) suggested that “a firm's critical resources become embedded in inter-

firm relationships and the practices that underpin such relationships can lead to

competitive advantage” In fact, many industrial parks has succeeded with full occupancy rate thanks to the relationships

Cause and Effect Map

Due to the specific characteristics of the products, the approach channels are also different from other industries and products The company is trying to reach the real

customers and to get them to purchase its offerings The choice of a suitable channel of marketing is also affect decisions in the marketing of products because channel affects the time, costs and the volume of sales With the potential causes mentioned above, the problem is stated in the cause and effect map as below:

Low Sale

Poor Relationship

with Intermediaries

Chapter 2: Alternative Solutions Root cause

Based on the list of potential causes got from reviewing the literatures which are failure to understand market, failure to apply technology in business and failure to

segment market and communicate with target prospects that supposed in above sections,

it is necessary to combine these potential causes with the circumstance of Protrade to find out root causes of the problem In order to do this task, a quantitative evaluation method is preferred to use A survey (refer to Questionaire 1 in Supporting Information section) contains of 8 questions is delivered to 15 staffs in Sales and

Ascendas-Marketing Department of the company The survey is Questionnaire-Likert with rating 1-5, has a total of eight questions, and focus on verifying root causes from four

survey from Wu (2011) There are 15 questionnaires are successful collected, giving a response rate of approximate 100 percent

For the first potential cause, the first three questions are about market research, the average score is around 3.64 while the percentage agree with lack of market understand is quite high (see in Table 3 for percentage rate display and Figure 1for graphical

visualization) These figures reflected that failure to research market is one of the causes

of the problem but the level of influence is not clear Keep going with the next questions, this relates to the technology and social media 26.67% disagree, 6.67% has no comment and 66.67% agree that customers contact the company from website and other social media So this is also not a root cause of the problem

For the third potential cause, the result stated that the cause does not have clearly influences to the company The rate of staff agrees with getting customers from

exhibitions and events is 33.33%, and the one agrees with customers survey to segment the market is 53.33% The average score is 3.03, it is insufficient to be the root cause of the problem

For the last potential cause, communicate with right intermediaries is significantly performed its role through the survey (Table 3 for percentage rate and figure 1) The result of the two last questions stated that the fourth potential cause has strong impact on problem for the project 60% and 26.67% of staff of sales and marketing department in

associations, 13.33% is neutral Additional, 20% and 53.33% strongly agrees and agrees

in turn that they don’t receive good support from intermediaries; just 26.67% disagrees with that The average mean of this is 4.17, very high compare with other causes The figures prove that communicate and establish relationship with the right intermediaries is the root cause of the problem of the project

Please select one choice for each item

Strong disagree Disagree Neutral Agree

Strong Agree Mean

3 You don’t have much information

and activities of competitors 6.67% 6.67% 0.00% 60.00% 26.67% 3.93

4 Not many customers contact you via

website and other social media 0.00% 26.67% 6.67% 66.67% 0.00% 3.40

5 Events, seminars were organized

regularly but didn’t brought real 20.00% 26.67% 6.67% 33.33% 13.33% 2.93

customers to your project

6 You don’t periodically make

customers survey for project

awareness

6.67% 26.67% 13.33% 53.33% 0.00% 3.13

7 You don’t have good supports from

the partners and associations 0.00% 26.67% 0.00% 53.33% 20.00% 3.67

8 There is a lack of strong

relationship with partners and

associations

0.00% 0.00% 13.33% 26.67% 60.00% 4.67

Table 3: Result of identifying root cause of Ascendas-Protrade

Figure 1: Results of identifying root causes of the problem

Alternative Solutions

Ascendas-Protrade Singapore Tech Park would like to offer an ideal business environment to their customers and the concept of work-live-play-learn is the key factors they aim to develop to differentiate their products and services from its competitors and desire the occupancy rate of the project quickly reach 100% After finding the central cause of the problem, the researching and developing possible solutions for the problem need to be executed Based on the finding of literature studies, three possible solutions

are proposed to improve the current situation of the project There are penetrating deeply the market, applying technology to business and establishing relationship with strategic partners and retain customers’ relationship

Establish relationship with strategic partners and retain customers’ relationship

A solution provider changes business-to-business marketing is to shift strongly to

a more relationship-based marketing According to Gebauer, Wang, Bernold, & Krempl (2007), the general focus of relationship marketing is on building long-term relationships with customers The relationship not only builds with customers but also establish with partners, consultants, agents and associations The reason is when Ascendas-Protrade develops strong and close relationships with the above mentioned objects, the in-time information and precious data could be given; open up business opportunities to the company, or even a priority introduction from partners could be made for Ascendas-Protrade The regular visit and connection from Ascendas-Protrade to partners and

associations can maximize their chance to approach potential customers Moreover, retain

a good long-term relationship with existing tenants can help bring more tenants to the project by word of mouth

Applying technology to business

Technology is also important to improve sales volume Technology has drastically changed the way people work, communicate, and receive information (Goodwin &

Stetelman, 2013) To help promote images and information of tenants’ products,

Customer Service department can fulfill to design a slide which shown all products from Ascendas-Protrade’s tenants to project on the screen whenever sales apartment host a

visitor to the site This can create a modern environment at the park and impress the visitors who come to inspect the project Nowadays, website is very important and is an effective channel to attract more clients According to Bond, Seiler, Seiler & Blake

(2000), the website is the tool for customers first look to study products and services and the real estate industry is not an exception Ascendas-Protrade should notice their

webpage to ensure that all information about products and services as well as related procedures which are helpful to the prospects should be shown in their website It needs

to be redesign properly and update helpful information to the page To do so, a person in charge needs to be assigned and take care of it This person needs necessary skills and knowledge of this field and understands SEO, forum seeding Besides, the website should

be more interactive so that the prospects can communicate with the company when they need to require more information

For the social marketing, Ascendas-Protrade needs to create facebook account, Fanpage, twitter, linkedin to connect with potential prospects and to update information

to their audiences, create appearance frequency i.e vision ratio to the target customers

The role of the marketing mix model in social marketing is a more suitable to approach (Gordon, 2012) Choosing and focus on the right channels including

advertising, public relations, personal selling and sales promotion to the target customers

to develop market share and position their brand Alternative models of marketing of product, packaging, brand, price and services and the respective methods of marketing channels especially social marketing to be applied can help improve much the company’s problem

For advertising, Ascendas-Protrade should push advertise on digital channels, social media, forum and website of real-estate and investment On traditional channels, they should carefully study the appropriate newspaper to periodically post articles of their park and industry news to create an interesting column to attract reader to frequently follow For internal news, company should publish quarterly newsletter to disseminate updated information of the park to their partners, agents, consultants, associations so they can rapidly update new information to potential clients

Penetrate the market deeply

Any organization wants maximum sales acceleration and before creating and implementing their plan, they need to penetrate the market and seize the competitive initiative (Robertson, 1993) Penetrate the market deeply to understand the business environment and competitors and to get greater insight from the market then the team can adjust their channels to approach customers and see what other competitors are doing Other competitors create a comfortable and free-hassle working environment for their clients, create integrated customers solutions for their tenants and attract more prospects

to come Indeed, integrated products and services to customized solutions can help firms

to differentiate from their competitors (Bonnemeier, Burianek & Reichwald, 2010) Ascendas-Protrade should provide their customers well-integrated customer solutions with clear functions such as industrial clusters, supporting industries, transportation service, human resource service, etc to free hassle business start-up for investors

Creating an industrial park with industrial clusters can create a community in the park which firms in the area can affect competitors in positive ways by increasing the

productivity, driving innovation and stimulating new businesses in the field This helps significantly more innovation takes place in communities which have stronger inter-personal networks (Porter, 2000) Supportive industries in the area are also necessary Business-consulting capabilities, referring to the ability to understand customers'

problems and being able to evaluate alternative solutions are considered essential

for firms providing customer solutions (Jalkala & Keranen, 2014) For many firms, the presence of related and supporting industries is very crucial to the growth of that

particular industry It is widely recognized that the supporting industries will play an important role in the success of the park

Human resource is one of the biggest assets of an organization (Cherian & Faroug, 2013) Understanding the importance of human resource and leveraging integrated

customer solutions, Ascendas-Protrade can solve the problem of workforce by

associating with universities and vocational schools in Binh Duong as well as Ho Chi Minh City to assist their customers in this matter Besides, they can bring added-valued services of shuttle bus to their tenants in the early stage of the park when just a few

tenants to come to operate here

Chapter 3: Selected Solutions and Implementation Plan

Selected Solutions

From above alternative solutions, the company needs to choose the most appropriate, effective and cost saving solutions to implement The strength, weakness, opportunity, threat (SWOT) analysis is used to determine the most suitable solution for APSTP As the result of exploration of three possible solutions in SWOT analysis (see in Table 8 in Supporting Information chapter), the solutions of market penetration and relationship establishing take a longer time to execute than the last one However, the SWOT analysis of relationship establishing (Table 8 in Supporting Information chapter) shown that the final outcome from this solution is much better than the other two, and it just takes a time to maintain so relationship establishing is marked as top priority As mentioned, expanding networking is extremely important, Ascendas-Protrade has to focus on building and maintaining strong relations with partners, agents, consultants, embassies and associations APSPTP logo should be put regularly on Associations’ websites, booklets, and directories to attract more investors from hot markets

Pay attention to this solution, events, seminars in local and oversea should be organised

or even celebrate factory tour for partners, international property companies, associations

as well as prospects to come to visit the park to understand more their products and

services to promote and attract more investors to come to the project

Implementation Plan

A plan is considered implemented if development patterns adhere to its policies and satisfy its objectives (Laurian, Day, Berke, Ericksen et al, 2004) It refers to a direct relation between plan objectives and plan outcomes Based on the research from Aken, Berends & Bij (2012), the implementation plan need to be decorated into five steps, which are objectives, actions, people, change organization, and communication plan The detail of implementation plan of the solution consists of five steps carefully stated in Table 9 in Supporting Information chapter

The objectives of implementation of relationship establishing are to set up

relationship with local associations, agents, partners, sub-brokers and international

property companies; build strong and good relationship with Government, set up closely relationship with International Associations, Banks and Embassy so that these

connections can support, introduce investors and provide information in time to the team

In order to conduct this, staff need to meet up with international associations, local associations, banks, agents, sub-brokers, international property companies, authorities and embassy on route or sometimes make a phone call to exchange information Besides,

in each meeting, hangout or catchup, the staff can exchange information to each other on market, projects, occupancy rate to maintain the relationship and support each other on information To enhance the close of relationship, the sales and marketing team should engaging in associations to become their members to take part in events, networks hosted

by associations A budget needs to be set for Tet gift for those connections also

Regularly send quarterly newsletter to them to keep in touch and keep them updated of

the project The company also need to organize factory tour or special event to invite members of local and international associations to join to promote project An additional action to add value for the prospects and tenants is connecting with the banks to support prospects and tenants on loan For developing relationship with partners and others

parties, each marketers, salesman should build their own relationship in respective with their markets in charge, i.e marketer or salesman takes care of which markets (Thai, Japan, Korea, China, Taiwan, etc.) will establish close connection with corresponding associations, agents, consultants Events and hosting activities need to be plan in advance with specific budget and plan to follow during a year or half per year and examine or monitor closely to make sure the budget is used effective and efficient

The participants who are necessary to execute this action include Head of Sales and Marketing Department, Sales and Marketing Manager, Sales and Marketing staff team leader, project manager, and all employees in the team The managing director

should go through the plan

The change will improve the sales performance, increase new leads, site visit, deal close and turnover More activities and creations will be made This will lead to staff motivation enhancement; feel more energy to pursue their career

Finally, in the communication plan step, the change plan need to be informed to head of sales and marketing department then set up meeting to discuss to examine the feasibility of the plan Then any feedback, comments were given for a complete plan The final plan and cost estimating will be sent to managing director for approval then sent to

cooperation in Singapore for final approval After approval signed, the plan will be implemented The whole team will have quarterly, monthly, weekly plan and weekly meeting to be easy to carry on and follow up To evaluate the result of this, the team will look back after every month to retrieve the actual result and improve the situation.

Chapter 4: Supporting Information

In this chapter, several of evidences, figures, data and information will be stated to support the mentioned problem so that the thesis can be stronger and more persuaded Questionnaires, tables and interview description, methods of collecting data as well as how to synthesize and process information will be also provided in this chapter

This study is made with 2 kinds of data, primary data and secondary data The

primary data can be obtained through the process of direct observation or by explicit

questioning of people (Rabianski, 2003) In this study, qualitative method was used to collect information and data The Head of Departments and staff of Ascendas-Protrade Co., Ltd have been interviewed to emerge the core problem of the firm Secondary data exists in published sources and is useful in analysis Primary and secondary data are

significant inputs into appraisal and analysis ((Rabianski, 2003) Data of sales and

marketing department has been used, some more industry information was obtained from

agents to clarify the problem

Transcript 1: Interview with Sales and Marketing Manager to get the symptoms of the problem

Hello Ms Thuy Thank you for your time

being with me today and discuss

company’s situation

Never mind I think it’s a good opportunity to discuss this issue as it may help improve the company situation

Please briefly share with me the current Well, it seems everything ok as we have the

company operation mother company from Singapore to support

However, in the long term, I’m not sure it can

go smoothly as there are some problems May I know the current emerged issue of

From the date of operation which year the

company make profit?

Not yet We make loss and the head quarter intends to sell the project to another

developer

What is the most concern from the

customers when they contact company?

Products and services

How many customers to come to your About 14 prospects each month on average