Home-grown tech company MYWave’s co-founder recounts his tech venture journey and the creation of one of the first cloud-based HR systems in Malaysia
THERE’S a saying that goes “You’ll never know your full potential until you try”, and this is the case with Lim Soo Jin, co-founder and chief technology officer of MYWave Sdn Bhd, a human resource (HR) consulting company that created emplX, one of the earliest cloud-based HR solutions in Malaysia.
His venture into the software industry was an unplanned one.
Like most people, Lim aspired to pursue a degree in electronic engineering back in the day.
“This was the first choice in my application to tertiary education, but fate had it that right after I enrolled in my course of choice in TAR College, I received news that I had been accepted by Universiti Malaya for a computer science course,” he said.
At that time in 1990, computer science was new and Lim was chosen to be in the pioneer batch of that course.
“What. Computer? Hmmm, I only knew you could write codes for it to process data and I did not know anything else,” recalled Lim.
Following his heart, he took the tech path and never looked back.
From not knowing how to boot up an IBM computer in the first lab lesson, Lim however, did well to develop his skills in computing.
A decade later, after graduation and gaining work experience in tech companies like Hewlett Packard Malaysia and Agilent Technologies, he and a few friends — Yip Hon Choong (chief operating officer of MYWave) and Datuk Yoon Chon Leong (chairman of the board of MYWave) and Khoo Siew Ling (chief executive officer of MYWave) — toyed with the idea of using computer technologies to help Malaysian companies in their business.
“And that was how MYWave was born in 2005,” he said.
THE BEGINNING
Long before cloud-based HR solutions such as Kakitangan.com and others came into the picture, MYWave’s emplX was already being used by companies such as Tune Talk, The Chicken Rice Shop and Yamaha.
“Our original objective then was to develop a system that provided companies with an ecosystem that could address and serve the need of manpower. We started by focusing on a recruitment system that allowed collaboration from our customers. To achieve this, the system must be online, and can be accessed from anywhere and anytime,” said Lim.
“Hence, that was how we decided to put the system on the cloud.”
While they were developing the recruitment system, they received enquiries from partners and friends if they could help provide them with a HR system for their companies that could cover other areas such as payroll.
“Due to this, we decided to pivot the cloud-based recruitment system we were developing to a cloud-based HR system instead. After all, there is a huge market for HR systems as most companies at that time (mostly small- and medium-sized enterprises) were using forms and spreadsheets to track their HR-related transactions,” said Lim.
ENTER emplX HR SOLUTION
Being on the cloud enables emplX to fulfil the desire to access and process key HR information from anywhere and anytime. This was the core advantage at the time emplX was introduced in 2008 although cloud-based HR systems have become more common now.
“Of the many characteristics that we incorporated into emplX’s design, we have two key characteristics. It must be cloud-based and the system must be highly configurable. These provided an advantage for the solution,” said Lim.
The second key characteristic is that the configurable modelling allows emplX to be configured to the different market needs and even within the same organisation among the section/function of a company.
“This enables our system to be able to reach into many different industries and companies of all sizes, from manufacturing to retail to service segments (auditing/finance/IT) and even hospitals,” he explained.
CHALLENGES
In any start-up, there will always be initial challenges to convince the market to accept your product.
Lim said MYWave picked the HR space as they see that HR is a few steps back in digitalisation compared with the supply chain or financial segments.
“So one of our earliest challenges was branding as we were not as well-known as the MNC competitors,” he said.
Another challenge MYWave encountered was that emplX is delivered on the cloud.
“Traditionally, an HR system is on the premises. Clients feel more secure when their data is within the company’s infrastructure, and putting the HR system on the cloud raises eyebrows in the beginning as they are wary about putting their data on the cloud,” said Lim.
Expectation of the HR communities proved to be another challenge to MYWave when its marketing and operation team went out to acquire its first few customers. “Little did we expect that there were many gaps, from process flow to functionality expectation that emplX was lacking then. So, our development team reconfigured and incorporated the critical gaps at record speed, finally earning a sign-off with the customer who continues to be with MYWave until now,” he added.
emplX received the ISO15408 and ISO27001 cybersecurity certifications in 2011 and 2020, respectively.
Today, MYWave has a strong team of 45 employees and its offerings and solutions are used by about 800 clients with 60,000 users from a wide range of industries, including manufacturing, retail, services, hospital, constructions, which has been made possible due to the configurable model in emplX’s design.
It has an annual revenue of close to RM5 million with expectation of a double-digit growth as it moves forward.
“Globally, we are increasingly seeing a push for digitisation in all sectors, including by governments and the pandemic has also accelerated this growth, especially in the HR space, with the work-from-home arrangements. MYWave with emplX is well positioned to capitalise on the growth,” Lim concluded.
