Finding the 'Why' Behind Talent Management Technology
Premiumsoft - HBR Case Study
1. Premium Soft : Managing Creative people
Swati Karn
MBA | Delhi Technological University
2. Premium Soft : Managing Creative people
Player in SQL software market for 10 years.
Rated number one in database.com ratings.
Staffed by 24 employees.
Downloaded over 45000 times per week.
In 2010, revenue $10 million, 2000000 database users
and 50000 customers in 138 countries.
Over 100 fortune 500 companies.
3. Premium Soft : Managing Creative people
Premium Soft forte was a continuous evolvement.
In 10 yrs time span an informal work environment
was developed to enhance creativity.
Ken Lin believed key to this process were its
creative people.
To develop a new software Founders had to
expand their workforce by 25%.
4.
5. Lin
Choi
Founded in 1999 by Lin & Choi as a web design company.
• Lin – a computer programmer for a bank.
• His job was too boring and not creative
• Spend months reading a user manual.
Approached his friend Choi
• Found too competitive market and slim
profit margin.
• Finally somehow turned into a software
development company.
• Products aimed to enhance productivity
and maximize the result.
Company Background
6. Company Background
Premium Soft developed products that accelerated the development of applications and
facilitated the management of databases. The company had two main software solutions :
7. Company Background
Launched Navicat in 2001.
Tool to manage and administer multiple database using a GUI.
GUI allow users to create, organise, access and share information.
Users ranged from individuals to system administrator and programmers.
8. Company Background
Launched its second product NaviCoder in October, 2009.
A powerful Integrated Development Environment for Windows.
A professional source code editor for PHP, HTML, C++ and JAVA.
Targeted individuals, support multiple programming languages and script files.
9. Company Background
PremiumSoft awarded a number of accolades.
Navicat recognised as “Most Popular MySql front end GUI.
In 2010, expand its product line to include a webware development team and change its
marketing and sales model.
11. Software
Development
• Major Software Features (6 months)
• Minor Software Features(1 month)
Marketing
• Market Research
• Development of market material
Customer
service
• Front line relationship with customers
Company Structure
12. Lin
Choi
Director of Software Development
• Discussing and setting Strategic goals.
• Solving problems + Identifying key features
to be modified/developed.
• Management of Company.
• Do not do any Programming.
Finance and Marketing Director
• Manage customer service and marketing
Dept.
• Responsible of Financial Mgt of company.
Distribution
Product Development Management task
Company Structure
13. KM TOOLS
Centralized system (Wiki) is
employed to store database which
comprise of Feedback from users.
wiki
Specific
questions
and
solutions
were posted
Basis for
product
development
Record
discussion
about
features
Milestone for
monitoring
progress.
14. Company Communication
Company communication is a set of activities involved in managing all internal and
external communications aimed at creating favorable point of view among stakeholders on
which the company depends.
15. Communication with the customers
Establishing feedback loops with its customers.
R&D teams helps them to remain competitive.
Trained customer team to communicate regularly with the customers.
Frequent feature updates were provided regularly.
Company Communication
16. Company Communication
Communication within the company
Quarterly meetings were setup.
Weekly meetings were held up.
Independent work was supported.
Supervisor’s regular meeting with employees.
Bottom-up driven communication.
17. Company Culture
Company culture can be defined as a set of shared values, goals, attitudes and practices
that characterize an organization.
18. Company Culture
Focused on cultivating innovation and loyalty from its young employees.
Relaxed culture.
Daily communication and mentoring.
Trust and belongingness.
19. Company Culture
Displaying confidence in employees abilities.
Providing employees positive feedbacks from customers.
Giving employees a proper time frame.
Regular monitoring was not encouraged.
20. RECRUITMENT
Recruitment is the process of searching for prospective employees and
stimulating and encouraging them to apply for the job
A complex process that involves lots of factors like image of the company,
nature of jobs offered, organizational policies, working conditions etc.
22. RECRUITMENT at PremiumSoft
Advertisements placed on online recruitment websites
Only 20% of the applicants had sufficiently high grades to warrant an
interview
“Looking for people who are friendly and willing to communicate because
we divide our company into different teams and team communication is very
important.” - Lin
23. Shortlisting through online portal
Personal Interview by a director
and supervisor
Decision based on feeling rather
than any systematic process
RECRUITMENT PROCESS at PremiumSoft
Only 20% of the applicants
Check communication skills /
remove shy/introverted
applicants
24. Premium Soft Employee Retention Strategy
Two main factors -
Offering competitive compensation to their
staff;
Maintaining a desirable work environment.
25. Attractive Perks and Benefits
It offered a competitive salary package;
Automatic one month bonus;
Increment of salary every two years.
26. Working Environment
Flexible working hours;
Recreational activities ;
To ease out employees strees the company offered
relaxing environment.
27. Human Resource Policies
They provided freedom to employees;
Non restrictive work environment;
Unpaid overtime work was not required;
Lin emphasized on building trust.
28. Low Turnover Rate
Premium soft has an extremely low turnover rate
Providing relaxed and learning culture;
Less than 10% turnover rate over 5 years;
Emphasized more on work environment.
29. Staff Evaluation System
PremiumSoft did not have formal evaluation system
PremiumSoft had informal evaluations of its employees
Supervisors played a crucial roles in assessment of group
members’ performance
Performance evaluation carried out by supervisors
Lin personally speak with underperforming employees
“𝐼 𝑡𝑟𝑦 𝑡𝑜 𝑡𝑎𝑙𝑘 𝑡𝑜 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑚 𝑖𝑛 𝑝𝑒𝑟𝑠𝑜𝑛 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑔𝑖𝑣𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑚 𝑠𝑜𝑚𝑒 𝑔𝑢𝑖𝑑𝑒𝑛𝑐𝑒 𝑜𝑛 ℎ𝑜𝑤 𝑡𝑜 𝑖𝑚𝑝𝑟𝑜𝑣𝑒,
𝑓𝑜𝑟 𝑒𝑥𝑎𝑚𝑝𝑙𝑒 𝑦𝑜𝑢 ℎ𝑎𝑣𝑒 𝑡𝑜 𝑠𝑝𝑒𝑎𝑗 𝑜𝑢𝑡 𝑖𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑚𝑒𝑒𝑡𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑦𝑜𝑢
ℎ𝑎𝑣𝑒 𝑡𝑜 𝑔𝑖𝑣𝑒 𝑚𝑜𝑟𝑒 𝑖𝑑𝑒𝑎𝑠, 𝑏𝑒𝑐𝑎𝑢𝑠𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑠 𝑖𝑠 𝑟𝑒𝑠𝑒𝑎𝑟𝑐ℎ 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑑𝑒𝑣𝑒𝑙𝑜𝑝𝑚𝑒𝑛𝑡“
- Ken Lin, co-founder, PremiumSoft
30. Employee Compensation
Employees were not rewarded for exhibiting exceptional qualities beyond
their peers.
Each employee had independent work,
they could not easily comparable
with others’ works.
31. Expression of Tolerance
Have had a discipline issues
• Excessive Chatting
• Spending half of the day on MSN
Some of the remarking tools has been
issued
• Warning
• Warning letter
32. Result of Bad Work Ethics
After warning and warning letter had been given to two workers, they made
statement “Workplace is not suitable”.
33. Challenges for the Future?
According to Lin, there were majorly 3 challenges
for premiumsoft: -
Recruiting and Retaining the Right People.
Maintaining the proper levels of quality,
production and creativity.
How to manage the growing human resources
need of the company?
34. Recruiting and Retaining the Right People
Who are the right/key people?
It means that the people that work in your company or
organization care about what you as a leader care about.
The people who are :-
Predisposed
Willing to go an extra mile
self-managed, self-disciplined and self-motivated
35. A Short Story
You’ve screened dozens of applicants, vetted a select few through multiple stages of your hiring
process, and now you’re down to the final two candidates. First there is Sarah. Interviewing her is
like playing a great game of tennis. You serve the question and she smashes it right back with a
well-crafted answer. At times your conversation is like the perfect rally. You cannot fault her
game.
And then there is Kate. On paper she looks great. But she is stumbling, struggling to find her feet.
She is just not giving you any kind of game. You think she can do it, but she is not convincing
you.
So who do you choose? Sarah, I assume. But is Sarah the best candidate or just the best candidate
at interviewing? “In many cases, job interviews are entirely disconnected from the reality of
people’s day to day job,” says Ron Friedman, author of The Best Place to Work.
36. Recruiting and Retaining the Right People
How to recruit the right people?
Give them a problem to solve.
Get feedback from people they meet outside of the interview.
Performance Appraisal System
Engage your current employees
Focus on the right recruiting channels
37. Maintaining Creativity Levels
Inspiring greater creativity in your business can help spur innovation.
Stress the importance of creativity for the business
Make time for new ideas
Actively solicit creative suggestions
Cross-fertilise
Tolerate mistakes
Reward creativity
38.
39. Managing the growing HR needs of the company
HR Department Formal Interview process
360 degree feedback
