Initially offering training services to a few clients to augment his earnings from a day job, this entrepreneur now heads a group that services big companies [By Marie Anne Fajardo]
Using his broad five-years experience in the business process outsourcing industry, Lawrence Sol Cruz set up his own training firm,
Training Management Solutions (TMS), in late 2004. He did so earn extra in-come on top of what he was then earning in his day job. Sol Cruz, now 28 began as a one-man team, setting up a laptop, printer, and fax machine at home. His initial capital of about 55,000 went into the purchase of his workstation equipment and of technical books on networking basics, database books on networking basics, database program, and marketing tools. He then availed of the service of his peers in the BPO industry as consultants.
“At the start, I didn’t find necessary to invest in an office because we normally would make our pitch to clients in their offices,” he recalls. “We even had to adjust to traditional companies by communicating with them through fax because not all of them were using e-mail at the time.”
Since then, TMS has been engaged in developing customized training and organizational development (OD) programs for client companies and in evaluating the quantifiable performance of their teams as a result of the training that they received. The principal services of TMS include training management, organizational development, project management, executive coaching, ang field market research.
“We also hold quarterly public courses that cover leadership development, communication, sales impact, customer service, branding, and marketing,” he adds.
As of last September, TMS had a total 19 industry training professionals in its staff. Six of them were training supervisors dedicated to specific corporate clients that included Bates 141/141 Worldwide, Nestle Food Services, Concept Asia, Ogilvy Action, British American Tabacco (Dunhill Senses).
Solc Cruz got started in the business when an advertising agency hired him to do a campaign for Nestle Welleness Campaign. “I was asked to do school visits in Metro Manila and coordinate with key officials to introduce and encourage wellness programs.” he recalls. His work impressed the client, Jovanny G. Caminade, channel business development group head for Nestle Philippines Inc., who made the following comment: “TMS was the first third-party service provider that ever took extra pains to gain a deeper understanding of us and of our business as its client.”
Relates Sol Cruz: “As I was doing work for Nestle, more projects came and I had to start looking for team members to help me with the training load. Although I had very little time to spare for other projects, I asked my previous co-workers in the training profession to handle them with me on a per project basis.”
Tie-up with such advertising agencies as Momentum and Concept Asia followed. “They also realized the value of training for their clients, ”Sol Cruz says.” Companies want to make sure tha their people are well trained. They value goals, and because of this, they expand their training departments. TMS then checks their performance and employs best practices and marketing program to help them increase sales. For British American Tabacco, for instance, we designed a program to train their brand ambassadors for their ‘Dunhill Senses’ product launch. We also trained their ‘Consumer Push Girls’ for their promotional bar tours.”
Sol Cruz says that the most challenging part was in getting the business started, particularly the administrative tasks of getting business permits for TMS and setting the bookkeeping and accounting system. He says he dealt with those challenges by doing the necessary re search, hiring people who can focus on those processes.”
He says he recovered his initial investment in TMS in six months and made P2.5 million in revenue in 2006. This enabled him to move from his home office to a new office in Mandaluyong City and to open a branch in Cebu City last August. He says that depending on the increase in client demand, TMS may need to move to a bigger location.
Sol Cruz says that TMS, which currently use six computer stations with wireless LAN connections, can carry out its business on a mobile basis. “We want to revolutionize how transact can be made,” he says. “Although doing online is something the country isn’t ready for yet, technology is something we value at TMS, and we want to encourage our clients to adapt to it as well.”
He sees no direct competitor to TMS yet and consider other training companies as allies rather than competitors. He explains: “We welcome competition. Other training companies actually help and even encourage us since they also focus on training. In any case, TMS is expanding into added service and out goal is to remain an efficient service provider.”
TMS uses both training and analysis in developing programs. Sol Cruz explains: “Our training programs are customized to out clients. No two programs are alike. Sometimes training isn’t always the solution. You need to evaluate the company based on what the company needs.”
Training programs may last from one day to three months, depending on the needs of particular client. TMS assigns three to five consultants to a client company and they brainstorm together before an analysis and a proposed program are presented to the company.
In the case of Motorola, Sol Cruz says, TMS designed and ran the company’s sales training.
“We are currently handling their promoter program, and managing their entire “Sales Ambassador Sales Force’ team, including supervisors who deal with customers purchasing Motorola phones,” he says.
Sol Cruz is looking at the feasibility of opening a branch office in Davao City. This, he says, will be after TMS branches out to Vietnam by early or mid-2008. “We have the support of a training company based there and we already have existing clients there as well,” he says. “In this business, we try to make sure that our service performance level for each of our clients doesn’t suffer.”
He is looking also into the prospects of entering other Asian markets, such as Singapore and Malaysia, and he hopes to soon launch the TMS website, www.tmsmanila.com, and open public training courses in Cebu.
“Work has been rewarding in the sense that we in TMS don’t feel stressed,” Sol Cruz says. “It has been a fun experience. There’s a family atmosphere at TMS and our employees work best when they feel at home. And as for me as an entrepreneur, the rewards are measured not just by income. It’s also about what you learn and the opportunity to learn with our clients.”
