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Published on September 29, 2007

Published on Sep 25, 2007

After almost two decades, Soft Square (1999) has become a success story to be held up as an example for the rest of Thailand's software industry.

The company was formed at the very dawn of Thailand's information-technology (IT) market, set up by a civil engineer with a love of technology and a readiness to go it alone in a field conspicuously bereft of other players.

That same former civil engineer, Ramade Silapapom, 52, is still in charge, and is the man behind Soft Square's success. Despite his lack of background in software technology, he has been able to run Thailand's largest software firm, in terms of its number of professional programmers, for 19 years.

Software Square (1999) was set up in 1988 with very little more than Ramade's passion for software as a potential business. His mission was to push the company to become Thailand's biggest software firm before 1999. He achieved the mission, and Soft Square remains the country's largest software firm, with 400 full-time and 100 freelance programmers. It has customers throughout Thailand and around the world.

Before Soft Square, Ramade worked as a project engineer for Land and Houses, having graduated with two bachelor's degrees, one from Chulalongkorn University 's Civil Engineering Faculty and another from Thammasat University's Commercial and Accountancy Faculty. Later, he returned to Chulalongkorn to gain a master's degree in business administration, and he discovered an ambition to become an entrepreneur. He decided to say goodbye to life as an employee and, with just Bt300,000 in his pocket, set up his software company with just three people, at a time when the local IT market was non-existent.

"I wanted to set up a business under conditions of having no money, but having only brains and plenty of time. I thought of the software business because, at that time, there were no companies selling software. The software industry was in a very early state. But I thought software was about matters of architecture and engineering - stuff that I was familiar with. I believed I could run this kind of business, even though I didn't have programming skills," Ramade recalls.

He soon found he could apply his experience in project engineering to designing and developing software to meet customer's requirements.

After nearly two decades, Soft Square (1999) recorded a profit of Bt70 million last year. Of this, Bt50 million came from Soft Square itself and Bt20 million came from its subsidiaries. Forty per cent of its revenue came from the global market and 60 per cent from the local market. Due to the country's economic problems, its revenue is expected to remain the same this year.

Its customers include 500 to 600 companies ranging across industries from retail business to textile and garment manufacturers, financial firms, banks and state enterprises.

"Our strength is our ability to provide total services, similar to the construction business, including designing, planning, developing, consulting and maintaining. This kind of stuff requires a lot of professional programmers, and we have the most professional programmers in the business. Many have been with us for a long time," Ramade says.

Holding on to his professional programmers is one of Ramade's big challenges. He says he trains his employees to learn from their work, and not simply earn money from it. He has pushed his employees to become business owners by setting up many subsidiary companies to create career paths for them. Now, under Soft Square (1999)'s umbrella, there are seven subsidiaries: Soft Square 1999 (Northern), Soft Square International, Northern Star Software, QSoft Consulting, eProfessional, Soft Professional and Soft Plus.

"We create new entrepreneurs instead of looking for new employees. Our policy is to create productivity through people. The business will grow in a sustainable way as long as we can expand its structure horizontally, through a network of companies belonging to the group that engage our employees and move them up to managerial levels," he says.

Because software services are Soft Square's core competency, human-resource development has become a crucial factor in the group's success. The company has been playing an increasingly important role in driving the development of Thailand's entire software industry. Ramade has devoted much of his time and the company's facilities and resources to developing new software engineers, through a number of initiatives.

"We cannot enjoy business on our own if the rest of the software industry is unsustainable, because we are a part of the ecosystem. The software industry is about human resources, and without enough competent software people, the industry cannot move forward," Ramade explains.

Soft Square provides an internship programme aimed at training students to become professional programmers. It offers a two-month short course covering the summer semester. In this programme the company has joined with 20 universities to provide grant funding of Bt5,000 per student.

Another initiative is called cooperative education, for senior students in computer science and computer engineering. It has been running for 12 years. About six universities have joined this programme and, together with Soft Square, have turned out about 50 computer engineers and computer-science specialists.

"The company and the universities work together to train and examine the students. We provide a grant of Bt12,000 per student who undertakes the course, and around 10 per cent of graduates end up working for us," Ramade says.

He sees the programmes as contributions to society, because Soft Square has been operating under tax-exemption privileges granted by the Board of Investment for the past eight years. This is the final year of those privileges.

The company has also joined with Software Park Thailand by feeding software development jobs to the park's "incubating" companies, and helping to train them in business management. Software Park trains three or four companies for three to six months per year.

At Soft Square (1999)'s head office in Pathun Thani, two buildings with an area of 5,800 square metres are set aside as an "IT faculty". There is a 100-seat auditorium, two 40-seat training rooms and ten 15-seat meeting rooms. Ramade sees it as an IT institute and software factory.

His goal is to retire from his managing director's post in the next two years and devote all his time to developing software specialists for the benefit of the industry in Thailand.

Ramade's latest initiative is called the "Social Business" scheme. The concept is to encourage software-related organisations - including both software companies and their potential customers - institutes that provide training courses. It also encourages government agencies involved in software development, such as the Software Industry Promotion Agency and Software Park Thailand, to cooperate in building a network of human resource development for the software industry. The scheme aims to develop 5,000 high-level professional programmers within five years.

"This plan is in its very early stages. It needs further development by many organisations having the same mission: to drive the country's software industry. At present, our industry lacks high quality human resources," he says.

Having devoted the past 19 years to the country's growing software industry, it seems Ramade Silapapom is eagerly signing up the rest of his life to making sure it prospers in a fiercely competitive global marketplace.

Asina Pornwasin

The Nation