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Published on March 4, 2008

When he was just a boy, Siriwat Vongjarukorn dreamed of becoming a superhero, like one of the characters in the Chinese martial novels he used to read day after day.

In a way, it inspired him later in life to build up his information-technology (IT) company, MFEC, from nothing at all to achieve annual revenue of more than Bt2 billion in just a decade.

Siriwat says that when he was a young boy he had a fascination for Chinese martial and superhero novels. He admits that, at that time, he spent much of his time in a fantasy world and the superheroes became like role models.

"When I was 10 years old, I liked to go to a library at the Srinakorn bank. It was a bank near my home that provided a library as a service to its customers. So I asked my mother to begin using the bank so she could apply for membership of the library for me," he says.

He later read every novel on the library's shelves that told of Chinese superheroes and martial artists. And the books impressed him so deeply that he adopted a personal discipline that he imagined would one day make him into a superhero and a successful man. His reading progressed to academic books.

"I always appreciated people who excelled, even my friend who was an excellent student. I tried to practice this excellence and read books to make myself into a smart guy. I wanted to become a superhero," Siriwat says.

His diligence led Siriwat to join the top 10 students in his class. Eventually, he chose to study computer engineering at Chulalongkorn University.

"I became a computer-engineering student because I thought that people who studied and graduated in computer-related fields would be able to develop their own businesses," he recalls.

When he graduated four years later, Siriwat and a friend set up a research-and-development company called Atrium Technology, with a specific focus on optical character recognition. the automatic recognition and interpretation of text. They hoped to be able to market the technology, but Atrium Technology, Siriwat's first business venture, failed.

Having learned many lessons, he began looking for venture capital to run a company that distributed IT products and services to the market.

"After setting up Atrium, I realised that Thai IT companies should focus on selling IT products and services, because Thai people were not familiar with the products of research and development. Around 98 per cent of IT companies in Thailand do not have their own research-and-development programme. So I jumped out and sought venture capital to set up MFEC," he says.

Such has been his success at running an IT products and professional services company that MFEC was listed on the Stock Exchange of Thailand in just six years.

However, he sensed a problem within the organisation. MFEC's staff was a collection of individuals, virtually without companions and certainly not working as a team. He was running the company according to its bottom line; it was a "flat" organisation. Although individual workers achieved their goals and the company's revenue was growing, there was no success coming from teamwork.

"I had to rethink. If all of my staff members were individualists who were prepared to do anything to achieve, then the company would be confronted with danger and problems. Therefore I decided that we should develop the spirit of officers and staff, so that this would encourage them to work as a team, to create a soul for the organisation and to build a firm basis for the company."

Siriwat's approach to transforming the company was unorthodox. He began to create social and community projects and invited his staff to volunteer to serve these projects. They included community-support activities such as building schools in rural areas. The idea was to find a balance for staff behaviour within the company, to overcome its growing culture of individualism.

"Initially we were focused purely on the company's financial success, but we had to encourage the staff to do business as a team and to look at the company's growth as part of their duty," he says.

The outside community projects and activities not only provided support for the communities concerned but helped MFEC's staffers to organise themselves and to generate spirit and energy.

"When they came back from developing their community activities, most of them had more energy for their jobs. They also had much better spirit and a willingness to help their colleagues to do anything as a team," Siriwat says.

Today, MFEC's staff not only has the spirit to work as a team but also finds satisfaction in supporting the firm's customers. Its products are built upon and proved by the success encountered by MFEC's customers. The staff is eager to enhance the company's business capacity and to increase its productivity.

"We say that our business is successful because our customers are successful and their satisfaction means that they can focus on their business without worrying about the back-office system," he says.

He believes that people are better able to make business decisions and develop projects and products if they can regard the past as keenly as they look to the future.

Once MFEC was able to mould a collection of individuals into a smoothly operating team, the company achieved growth of more than 30 per cent per year and achieved annual revenue of Bt2 billion just 10 years after its formation.

"I believe that the soul of an organisation, its corporate culture and teamwork are important in driving business and economic growth. Moreover, these things increase productivity and efficiency as well as attracting long-term business," Siriwat says.

MFEC is now looking overseas for business expansion, to export markets in the US, Laos, Cambodia and China.

"International markets are a new opportunity for a local software company like MFEC," Siriwat says. "We have set up an international market team to support our offshore efforts and to give us competitiveness with strong international rivals."

Siriwat's life is not dedicated solely to his business. He is also a family man who strives to create a balance in his life by spending every weekend with his family.

"I think we need to find a balance in our lives. I spend five days of each week managing my business, working as a managing director. When the weekend comes, I spend my time with my family in order to reboost my life. I play with my two-year-old son. I am always a horse for him to ride."

And even though, in his business life, he works among hi-tech products and services, he does not buy hi-tech toys for his son.

"I don't think hi-tech toys are useful for my son. Parents are the best toys for children. There is not a hi-tech toy anywhere in the world as good as a child's parents," Siriwat says.

Jirapan Boonnoon

The Nation