Premium Soft is a software development company that was founded in 1999 and has grown to 24 employees. It develops database management and coding software, including its flagship products Navicat and NaviCoder. The company emphasizes creativity and informal communication among its young employees. It faces challenges in recruiting and retaining talented staff, maintaining high productivity and creativity, and managing growing human resource needs as it expands.

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%.

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.

10. PremiumSoft
(24)
Software
Development(13)
Supervisor
Junior
Programmer
Senior
Programmer
Marketing
Supervisor
Customer Service
Company Structure

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.

21. PREFERRED CANDIDATE
Computer science
degree
Proficiency in
programming languages
Recent university
graduate
Final year project in
related subject
High academics
Graduate from particular
universities

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

39. Managing the growing HR needs of the company
HR Department Formal Interview process
360 degree feedback

40. “The best choose to be here.”
Premiumsoft