Witnessing the stalled business activities of many businesses, Ecoba chose to upgrade its own capacity to cope with the impact of the pandemic.

Seize the golden moment

According to the Ministry of Planning and Investment, the complicated epidemic situation has caused more than 10,000 businesses to withdraw from the market every month this year. As of the end of August 2021, 85.5 thousand enterprises went bankrupt, up 24.2% over the same period in 2020. Among them, 43.2 thousand enterprises temporarily suspended business, 30.1 thousand enterprises in pending dissolution procedures and 12.2 thousand enterprises completed the dissolution procedures.

With the above alarming numbers, in addition to optimal financial policies to help businesses survive the pandemic, the problem of upgrading professional capacity and standardizing processes also needs to be thoroughly solved. Many businesses are faced with the choice to either firmly overcome difficulties, or accept being left behind and falling into crisis.

As a business that has been in the Top 10 reputation construction companies for 2 years published by Vietnam Report, Ecoba chose to take advantage of the pause caused by Covid-19 to upgrade and strengthen its foundation. Two of the many strategic activities focused on implementing by enterprises are the quality improvement program and the professional management system program. Referring to the role of strengthening the business foundation in the context of the pandemic, Mr. Nguyen Trong Thong - representative of the Ecoba Quality Improvement Committee shared: "This is an inevitable trend that marks the outstanding growth of the company, so I think it is very suitable and will create sustainable development for the business in the present time".

Cooperating with Japan's leading investor in researching a specific set of standards

The market is competitive, customers are also increasingly sophisticated and professional. To retain customers, Ecoba determines the core thing to do is to bring direct benefits to contractors and investors. A representative of Ecoba's Quality Improvement Committee said: "The implementation of the quality improvement program has actually been carried out for a long time, but during this time Ecoba has focused on improving the quality control method. quality and improvement of materials”. The purpose shared by him is to match the project operating model. Construction stages from bidding, project implementation, project closing to warranty handover are also integrated.

Accordingly, Ecoba has cooperated with Haseko - Japan's Top 1 corporation in construction and real estate development to study the specific set of standards VHPS - Vietnam Version Haseko Performance Standard. VHPS is built on the basis of combining Vietnamese construction standards with international standards such as JIS (Japanese Industrial Standard), ASTM (America Society for Testing and Materials), BS (British Standard), ensuring that the requirements of domestic and foreign investors are covered.

During the implementation process, Ecoba adheres to the principle of "stopping water upstream" to prevent risks right from the design stage, minimizing the cost of remediation and repair. At the same time, enterprises apply the Centerline model in control work to monitor the process step by step through many rounds. From there, Ecoba can convince the investor to accept according to the criteria proposed by the cost benefit and long-term strategy.

Upgrading the professional management system

In addition to the quality improvement program, the management system was also improved and trained, avoiding the situation of breaking the information chain during project operation. The fact that Ecoba's staff can interact, connect and work remotely without interruption helps departments coordinate smoothly and professionally. This is a positive result of the enterprise after a persistent journey of pursuing the application of information technology in the management chain. Having prepared early has helped Ecoba not be dependent on the traditional way of working at all stages and easily overcome the impact of the pandemic.

Ecoba currently owns a centralized data management ERP system and self-developed IT software related to the construction segment, closely linked to the process and organizational structure. Enterprises always ensure two-way parallel information from business leaders down to departments and vice versa. All operational data will be put into the common system so that the leadership can understand the progress of the work, or directly coordinate the project and assign it to personnel. Continuously inherited data between stages saves 3-5 times. The administration system is divided into 3 levels depending on the level and uses suitable tools of different complexity.

Mr. Nguyen Hai Quan, representative of the System Management Board, said that the complete transformation to management on the system helps Ecoba to understand the factors of progress, quantity, resources and deadlines. “The close connection of information in the work from the project to the office helps us make timely and accurate management decisions as soon as problems appear. Thereby bringing higher efficiency, saving costs and optimizing time for customers.” In addition, the System Management Board always listens to users to fine-tune the system to be suitable and close to actual operation.Thanks to the change in the professional management system, the business is assessed as mature at a level of 3 or 4 according to PMI's standard scale.

Although the epidemic brings many difficulties, Ecoba still holds a positive view: “The time of the epidemic and the distance is also an opportunity for us to look at the overall picture, including the implementation plan for the company, patching and fixing processes that are flawed and unsuitable for operation”. Enterprises expect to bounce back after the pandemic when quality and processes have been improved, trained and practiced smoothly.