Leading wireless services provider, Smart Communications, Inc. (SMART) has collaborated with SEEDFINANCE Corporation, a provider of wholesale credit to Filipino microfinance institutions and small enterprises, to equip island-based microfinance institutions with mobile-based financial products and technologies that will allow them to send and receive funds using SMART mobile phones.

Dubbed as the Islands Activation Program (IAP), the initiative utilizes Smart Money as a fast and secure alternative to send and receive funds in islands or areas where there is little or no access to formal financial services, and will benefit members of close to a hundred MFIs in various parts of the Philippines.

SEEDFINANCE works with 73 cooperatives with an aggregate clientele base of 1.2 million poor and low-income people.

It signed an agreement with ENCASH to install automated teller machines
(ATM) with allied cooperatives for the speedier and more secure receiving and dispensing of cash.

SEEDFINANCE chairman Carlos Ani said in a press briefing that the potential for the deployment of ATMs and starting mobile banking initiatives is immeasurable.

Ani explained that rural folk spend so much on transportation just to get to a rural bank located in a town center.

Meanwhile, the partnership between SMART and SEEDFINANCE come at the heels of the successful launch of the Smart Money Center in Polillo Island in 2008.

In October that year, the Polillo Group of Islands found its financial channels to the mainland cut off. The only rural bank went bankrupt, while the National Telecommunications Center mercilessly ceased its telegraphic transfer operations in the area. The nearest bank was three hours away by boat.

SMART partnered with the island's leading cooperative, Rhudarda Multipurpose Cooperative, to unveil the first Polillo Smart Money Center, which allowed residents to send and receive cash in an instant through the fast and secure mobile-initiated fund transfers in Polillo at the speed of a text message. This same remittance model will be rolled out in key provinces of Visayas and Mindanao under the IAP.

Since 2000, SMART has been actively promoting the use of mobile-based financial services and microfinance solutions, through the revolutionary Smart Money-the world’s first electronic cash card linked to a mobile phone.

Through Smart Money, SMART subscribers are able to conduct mobile banking, electronic money transfers, micro-purchases and micro-payments with just a few clicks on a cellular phone with a SMART Sim.

Two years ago, SMART received a World Business and Development Award given by the International Chamber of Commerce, Prince of Whales International Business Leaders Forum, and United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

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Growing a business requires continuous attention, careful planning and a willingness to take calculated risks. No matter how successful, a business left by its self will go to pot. In the last decade, the cost and risks associated with doing business have risen dramatically, but also opportunities. Drawing from the experiences with small and medium enterprises of its members, the Manila-based Association of Development Finance Institutions in Asia and the Pacific (ADFIAP) proposes:

1) Give priority to new product or service development. Always seek ways to improve what you have to offer and develop means to reinvigorate your own products or services before someone else does.

2) Find new applications for existing products or services. Be sure to establish a communication means between your company and your product/service users to determine how they really use your products. Offering a financial incentive to surface new applications helps too!

3) Remember the easiest sale of them all. You have already spent the money to acquire your customers and build a relationship with them, why not ask what else we can make or provide for them?

4) Know where to get all the answers. All the answers about how your company is doing, where it should go and what it should stop doing, reside within your own customer base.

5) Buy rather than build. Take a gook look at your targeted industry. There usually is a resource limited company that offers viable products and services that relate to yours. Consider buying them versus investing the same money in organic growth alternative.

6) Think out of boundaries. If you just focus on one market, someday you will find your company can no longer effectively compete because someone else beat you to others.

7) Go eCommerce. Establish an effective means, via the Internet for your customers to educate and update themselves, solve their own problems and order your products with a few clicks of the computer mouse.

8) Know when to say "No" and "Stop". Making or doing something that no longer makes financial sense needs to be dealt with decisively, no matter the, "we have always made those, we have always sold those, or we have always done it that way" commentary.

9) Measure and publish everything. Business practices can only be improved upon if they are written, measured, tracked and periodically audited for effectiveness. All results justify being shared with all employees, good or bad. Always celebrate success publicly, criticize poor performance privately.

10) There is always a price to pay for business growth. There is no clear roadmap on how to best grow your company, each company has its own growth challenges.

Source: Business Line Vol. 2 No. 3 2004

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