Nepal government sets roadmap to improve investment climate reforms

Nepal was ranked 94 out of 190 economies on the Doing Business 2020 ranking, marking a significant shift for the country into the Top 100 Economies on the Ease of Doing Business. As a part of the government’s ongoing efforts to improve the country’s investment climate reforms, the Office of the Prime Minister & Council of Ministers (OPMCM) and Ministry of Finance, with the support of the World Bank Group, organized a workshop to develop institutional arrangements for the newly formed Coordination Centre in OPMCM and put together an implementation plan for Doing Business reforms.

“A new Nepal is in the making. We are a private sector dominated economy, and the role of the public sector is to unlock bottlenecks for the private sector. Public-private partnership is the key strategy for doing business in Nepal,” stated Honorable Minister of Finance, Dr. Yuba Raj Khatiwada.

“The international best practices that we are learning today need to be customized based on the context of Nepal,” stated Dr. Teertha Raj Dhakal, Secretary, OPMCM. “Implementation and delivery are the areas where the country needs to improve, and we also need to change our behavior and culture to make Nepal more private-sector friendly.”

The workshop organized on 24-25 February looked at global best practices from leading delivery unit practitioners from PEMANDU Associates, Malaysia and Government Partnerships International, UK on the catalytical role of the delivery unit in supporting the Doing Business reforms.

“We need to encourage private sector participation in all sectors,” stated Dato’ Sri Idris Jala, President and CEO of PEMANDU Associates. “This can only happen if we implement radical changes in government regulations to facilitate investors and eliminate cumbersome procedures involved in doing businesses in the country.”

Nepal climbed 16 spots in the global Doing Business 2020 rankings. Four major positive reforms in a single year – construction permits, access to credit, trading across borders and contract enforcement – were a record for Nepal and accounted for a third of all reforms recorded by Doing Business in the last 10 years. At the same time, two reforms that made it difficult to do business – starting a business and property registration – were also recorded for Nepal.

The major outcomes of the workshop included the development of the Coordination Center’s institutional structure based on the global best practices of international delivery unit practitioners tailored to the Nepali context, and agreement with the core ministries and private sector on the short (until April 2020 – the closing window for Doing Business 2021 report), medium (next 15 months) and long-term (next 2 years) investment climate reforms and implementation strategies. These initiatives are intended to mobilize increased private investment in support of equitable growth and job creation.

“The Government of Nepal is playing a critical role in establishing a conducive climate in which businesses operate and is taking the needed steps to strengthen the environment for private sector businesses and investments,” stated Faris Hadad-Zervos, World Bank Country Manager for Nepal. “The experience of the international experts from Malaysia and the UK provides a springboard for Nepal’s next steps. Their success stories and lessons learnt can help inform the design of appropriate institutional structures and operational framework for the Coordination Center.”

The workshop was actively attended by representatives from the government, regulatory bodies, private sector and development partners.

 

Source: The World Bank.

Read the full article here.

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Unlocking Quantum Leap Profitability in Private Education

In spite of being a household name in the private education industry, Education Co was struggling with declining profits and student enrolment over the last four years. Meanwhile, its competitors were catching up with newer facilities and fresh entries to the market. The company needed to boost its profitability while remaining true to its purpose of delivering holistic education. PEMANDU Associates dove in to deconstruct the problem and find the best solutions to meet their objectives.


The Story

As one of the private oldest education providers, Education Co had maintained its strong brand heritage through decades of operations, with its university ranked among the Top Tier of Private Higher Education Institutions in its country of operations, and the Top 250 universities the QS: Asia University Ranking. The company’s operations now span business units across a university, college and schools.

Despite its reputation for academic excellence, the company’s net profits had been declining at a 5.1% CAGR over the last four years:

  • Student enrolment, the key driver of revenue, had dropped by 23% overall due to a decline in university and college students.
  • Capacity utilisation also declined as a result, with their university operating at 73% capacity and college at 52% capacity.
  • Group operating costs had been escalating.

Out of the three business units, its college operations in particular had suffered, risking insolvency in two years if it continued operating in the status quo.

PEMANDU Associates was tasked to employ its Big Fast Results (BFR) – 8 Steps of Transformation Methodology© to help the company achieve a quantum leap in their profitability.


Our Approach

Over the course of six weeks, PEMANDU Associates undertook the following steps:

1. Establishing the Lab’s True North
The True North sets out the overarching goal that aligns all the initiatives identified at the labs. At a Strategic Management Workshop involving the CEO and key decision makers, the True North was determined as: “Delivering holistic education by operating at optimal capacity to achieve the targeted profit by 2020.” Success in optimising capacity and profitability would validate Education Co’s value proposition of delivering “whole life education”.

2. Structuring the Lab to support the True North – Workstreams
The True North was broken down into two focus areas for the labs:

a) Holistic Education – Fulfilling its value proposition

To ensure that holistic education relates to tangible outcomes, a framework was developed to clearly define the delivery of holistic education for the organisation

b) Capacity Optimisation – Achieving this requires a function of:

  • Market growth: Market share and expansion into new segments
  • Business opportunities: Revenue maximisation, Cost optimisation and Asset management

3. Landscape analysis
This would benchmark Education Co against their competitors in the industry. A study of the industry landscape revealed:

  • University – Priced at a premium but perceived to deliver lower value
    • In the tough economic climate, affordability was the top consideration for student enrolment. While the university had excellent academic reputation, it lacked differentiation to support its premium pricing. Thus, Education Co must enhance the delivery of its value proposition
    • The university lacked partnerships with strong international education institutions to support their programme
    • Insufficient programmes to cater for future areas of opportunities
  • College – A 5-year decline due to a static business model that did not respond to increasing competition
    • Shifting market demand as students preferred foundation programmes compared to the limited pre-university offerings at the college
    • International schools began offering A-Level programmes, capturing school-leavers who were traditionally the college’s target market base
    • Competitors were offering lower prices and better facilities
  • Schools – A risk of 60% oversupply in the market due to new competition
    • The number of schools had increased by 124% since the liberalisation of the market five years ago
    • New global players and developers were entering the market

4. Internal assessments
To have an in-depth understanding of its operations, the business streams mapped out their programmes based on Gross Profit (GP) Margin vs. Capacity Utilisation (CU). This enabled a high-level assessment of the appropriate strategic action for each programme:

The mapping revealed:

  • 80% of the university’s gross profits were contributed by its top 20% programmes. Thus, Education Co should optimise capacity for these top performing programmes.
  • Half of the university’s programmes appear unprofitable.
  • Further analysis showed that cost per student rose to 49% of revenue, mainly driven by facility management costs

5. Identifying key initiatives and opportunities to achieve the True North
This final step began with brainstorming by workstreams for ideas to achieve the True North. These ideas were then prioritised according to their potential impact and related issues. Prioritised initiatives were fully developed into detailed implementation plans, outlining the action items and timelines, persons in charge, the stakeholders involved, resources required and potential issues and mitigation plans. Based on these plans, the initiatives underwent a final prioritisation assessment according to their overall impact on the True North and feasibility of implementation.


The solution: Key recommendations

59 initiatives were developed and prioritised for Education Co across several key areas. Among the key initiatives were:

  • Holistic Education: To enhance the delivery of the value proposition
    • Integration of holistic education competencies and attributes into teaching and learning curriculum across the group
    • Establishment of a regional centre of excellence of holistic education
    • Industry immersion for real world experience. The university will create a full-fledged business to allow hands-on working experience for students
    • Partnerships with established international institutions for training programmes
    • Upskilling the current teaching staff and recruiting next generation teachers familiar with constructivist and social learning
    • Enhancing student living experience by providing better options for economical food, parking and conducive spaces
  • Optimising capacity across all business units
    • Prioritising the university’s top 24 programmes
    • Offering scholarships to compete with lower tuition fees
    • Expanding product offering to attract different demographics, such as night classes for working adults, certifications and short courses
    • Programme bundling for greater value
  • Activating alternative revenue streams
    • Renting out physical space and facilities for trainings, conferences and meetings with a package deal
    • Opening for advertisements at the grounds
    • Franchising popular programmes with established education institutions in countries with unmet demand
    • Establishing satellite learning centres in other states with high demand
  • Cost optimisation
    • Streamlining support functions and enforcing a cost ratio by pegging support costs to % share of revenue
    • Rationalising utilities cost
    • Streamlining academic offerings by merging common modules
    • Closing unprofitable programmes
  • Enablers
    • Developing business intelligence strategy and data analytics to target the right market with right strategy, to potentially increase sales by 20%
    • Setting realistic budgets for sales & marketing
    • Campus redevelopment for more flexible facilities required for new programmes
    • Robust governance and coordination led by the Transformation Management Office to ensure the delivery of recommendations, thus enabling business units to focus on delivering holistic education


The outcome

The initiatives developed at the lab aimed to yield an increase in profit after tax by 178% in 5 years:

  • Turning profits from a projected loss in the year
  • Increasing student enrolment by 147%
  • Increasing capacity utilisation from 33% to 99%

Providing quality education to generations of students is no easy task. Faced with competition from newer institutions, Education Co sought to boost its profitability while still remaining true to its mission of delivering holistic education.

By performing a landscape analysis and company-wide internal assessment, PEMANDU Associates was able to identify certain projects that could be turned into quick wins and deliver the lab’s true north – enabling Education Co to deliver holistic education by operating at optimal capacity to achieve the targeted profit by 2020.

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Thriving in Foreign Lands

By Serene Tan Zheng Xiew, Manager at PEMANDU Associates

Speak to a management consultant and what becomes apparent very quickly is not only the maddening work hours, but the constant travel. While this may bring about glamorous images of consultants with their customary Tumi bags working out of airport lounges, the constant travel can take quite a toll on – both physically and mentally.

Throughout my almost two-year stint here with PEMANDU Associates, our work in government transformation and my expertise has provided me with opportunities to not only work in a host of countries but to collaborate with people from different cultures. Projects would usually take ten to twelve weeks and throughout that time, we’re just working tirelessly to ensure that we can facilitate and develop strategies that will help achieve a business’ or government’s True North. And given the firm’s belief in delivering Big Fast Results, we often hit the ground running from the moment we land.

I’ve learned very quickly that one of the keys to a fruitful engagement is to quickly adapt to the people and the work culture of the country you’re in. There are no playbooks for this, so you have to be nimble enough to adapt on the job. This may sound trivial but acclimatising to new work cultures is important in ensuring that you can successfully manage project stakeholders and produce results. This is all part of the Big Fast Results approach that we at PEMANDU Associates consultants anchor our work on – in other words, to deliver tangible results in the quickest, most effective way possible.

To date, I have been assigned to projects in three different countries across three different continents, so you can imagine the vast differences in cultures. However, in preparing myself for the trips, I usually stick to a few ‘rituals’ which have been a lifehack of sorts, regardless of where I’m headed to.

 

Do Your Research!

Preparation begins way before you take-off!

Like a true consultant, every trip begins with an obsessive flurry searches into available databases shared by the Engagement Manager to study the country, its people and its customs. Next, I’d look out for information about the specific industry related to my assigned workstream and speak with our colleagues who have experience in similar industry experiences.

I’ve been involved in quite a few socio-economic transformation projects so my pre-reading also helps dig up insights on the country’s laws and policies. The last thing you would want to happen is to devise strategies based on policies that didn’t work before!

Call it old-fashioned, but appearances matter. Getting familiar with a culture’s dressing etiquette is another great step to ensure that you adhere to cultural boundaries. Prior to one of my work trips to Oman, I made sure my wardrobe was prepared to suit the Muslim-majority Sultanate to avoid offending my counterparts. Being outcome oriented, the last thing we’d want is for wardrobe mishaps to discount or hinder our work delivery.

 

Get Off on the Right Foot

My first two days in a new country will determine how the rest of the project will turn out. Ergo, it’s extremely important for me to make the right impression to my counterparts. The early stages of an engagement allow working teams to establish working processes, hours and norms. Use this time to communicate with your counterparts to understand the issues they have been facing so that they know you are here to help. One of the firm’s leadership principles is ‘building a winning coalition’ to ensure alignment towards a common outcome. And taking a people-first approach has been key to helping me achieve this!

 

R-E-S-P-E-C-T!

Aretha Franklin’s famous lyric has never rung more true. Respect is the foundation to being able to work well with people who are from different backgrounds. Afterall, you’re on their home turf so you have to play to their rules.

In St. Lucia, the people adhere strictly to their working hours (9am-5pm). This means any e-mails or work requests sent after 5pm will need to wait until the next day. For us Asians with a habit of working through ungodly hours, this means, if you promise to deliver something ‘by EOD’ it doesn’t mean end of day by your standards.

The good news is, the firm believes in rigorous planning (we call it a ‘3 feet plan’) which favours granular activity plans toward an outcome or deliverable. This makes it easy for us to plan our time efficiently to ensure that things are done with a clear direction and on time.

 

Keeping Your Mind on the End Goal

With the limited timeframe that we have on a given project, you need to maintain a razor-sharp focus on the project’s true north. There will be roadblocks in reaching the finish line and when they do appear, there are times where a stand has to be taken, and perhaps unpopular decisions made to move the needle. Problem solve the issue by finding alternatives, and in my case, I would seek information from other individuals who might also have access to stakeholders with greater authority. If there is a need to bypass individuals, seek help from your team lead or Engagement Managers, to get some time with the stakeholder in question (but remember to do so diplomatic in your approach!).

In the business of Big Fast Results, we don’t have the luxury of time to entertain prolonged inaction on a matter. So carry out your tasks relentlessly, monitor progress, and when faced with difficulties, continuously find solutions that can help you overcome them.

 

Build Camaraderie

Your work assignment is probably going to be the only time you will be visiting the country so why not make friends out of it?

One of the key components of PEMANDU Associates’ Big Fast Results (BFR) Methodology – 8 Steps of Transformation© is to hold a Lab. This is an intensive process where cross-functional groups of stakeholders are brought together over a period of 6-8 weeks to identify prioritised initiatives and action plans toward a common goal. A Lab can get very intense for everyone involved so to lighten up the mood, I usually utilise break times to chat with my stakeholders. Sometimes, we even play simple games just to break the ice! This actually helps build my relationship with my counterparts, which will consequently result in better working relations.

Spend time with your stakeholders, and get them to share more personal things. It will make adapting so much easier once you have newly made friends who can guide you on how to navigate around their culture.

Challenges abound when you carry out work in a different country. And while we may sometimes learn things the hard way, the key is that we learn. Our CEO, Dato’ Sri Idris Jala says that in the pursuit of a goal, even if we slip up the important thing is that we’re transformed along the way. And boy have I learned and transformed!

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How Effective Public Sector Communications Can Combat Fake News

By Alex Iskandar Liew, EVP & Partner of PEMANDU Associates, and Melissa Wong, Senior Associate

From stories of people taken ill from eating cooked bats and infected mandarin oranges, to reports of biological warfare and sick children being abandoned in airports, the internet has been bombarded with fake news and disinformation arising from the coronavirus. Some are even tips that have been proved to be misleading or false. One such claim, shared over 16,000 times on Facebook, claims that the virus can be prevented by keeping your throat moist and avoiding spicy food. The post claims to be from a Department of Health (DOH) Bulletin issued in the Philippines, but the information does not match the advice posted on the official DOH website which instead advises people to practice proper handwashing and cough etiquette as ways to prevent the virus’ spread.

Today, we live in a world where everyone has more or less equal access to information. On the internet, anyone is a creator of content. This totals up to a lot of voices. Voices that can be very loud due to the viral nature of social media. Voices that are dissenting due to misinformation. And, voices that bears factual inaccuracies. The Verge calls it an epistemic crisis, where large groups of people “muddle along with very different understandings of reality, undermining the ability of elected officials to govern.”[1]

In times of crisis, it’s more important than ever that the voices of public sector agencies and governments be heard over everyone else’s. But even when things are calm, maintaining open communications between the government and the public is a good habit to practice.

 

The role of communications in governance

The key to good governance is effective communication. While pushing out information is still necessary to government communications, it needs to be paired with the willingness and ability to engage with the public.

Thanks to technology, modes of communications has allowed for the public to be notified about changes in policies and be able to understand the need for such changes. The public wants to be engaged. They also want lightning-fast responses and user-friendly interfaces. And they want to be able to know who will be accountable when things go wrong.

It’s a lot like practicing customer service excellence in the public sector. While being informative and supportive to citizens has always been the duty of the public sector, governments today need to think of the public as a customer – looking at ways to deliver on their promises to a demanding demographic as quickly and as accurately as possible.

This is where a communication strategy can come in. A well-crafted public sector communications programme can:

  • Improve effectiveness – by building broad support and legitimacy for programmes and policies
  • Enhance responsiveness – by enabling government agencies to understand and respond to the public’s needs
  • Ensure accountability – by explaining government stewardship and providing mechanisms to hold governments accountable

The basic principle of any effective communications is trust. Just like businesses, citizens must be able to trust not just what the government is telling them but that the government will engage with them and place them at the core of any policy. In return, public trust makes it easier to build up support for the continuing process of economic and social transformation.

Increasing trust in the government would also help ensure that the government becomes the public’s first point of contact when it comes to sourcing for information. When the people don’t feel that the government is quick enough to respond to current events, they tend to seek out and believe alternative sources of information. This leads to the rapid spread of fake news on social media sites.

 

How can we create effective public sector communications?

Let’s say that a government has decided to embark on a transformative agenda to improve national development. They’ve done the work to come up with a list of initiatives that need to be implemented to reach their goal. Some of these initiatives are relatively painless to the public. Others are not. So how can they justify themselves to the public?

Good communication starts with a programme. It needs to be connected to a strong identity and a clear message from the start – like a roadmap, for example. A roadmap is a detailed implementation document that defines a goal or desired outcome and includes detailed steps and milestones needed to reach it. It also serves as a communication tool, highlighting and articulating the strategic thinking behind the implementation programme – the how’s, what’s, who’s, when’s and why’s – behind both the goal and the plan for getting there.

But just establishing a true north isn’t going to be enough if the outcomes aren’t being communicated to all stakeholders and benefactors. Keeping details of a project quiet in case performance turns out to be underwhelming does little to inspire trust. Instead, it should be presented through all available mediums of communication available to the government. And be consistent – ensuring that a government speaks in unison by ensuring narratives are streamlined helps establish clear and succinct messaging in today’s cluttered and noisy media space.

Communicating progress and explaining challenges faced along the way does not weaken a government. Rather, it inspires belief and promotes transparency in the discipline of action. It also reassures that public that there has been progress made, even when it’s not immediately visible.

 

Know your audience

It’s also about tailoring the message to the audience – in this case, the public. The key to effective communications is knowing exactly who the target audience is and what they’re interested in. For example, Metro Trains Melbourne released a multi-platform public service awareness campaign in 2012 called ‘Dumb Ways to Die’ to promote rail safety. The train agency knew that a traditional ‘doom and gloom’ PSA would only repel Australians, which is why they decided to go down the road of making the campaign entertaining, with a catchy song and bright animation, as well as sharable, publishing the video in short bite-sized chunks across multiple platforms. The campaign went viral, racking up millions of views and resulting in a 20% reduction in rail-related accidents year on year.[2]

Knowing your audience and demonstrating that knowledge is one of the most effective ways to connect with and persuade them. Taking the time to consider their situation, analyse their needs and putting forward policies that confront their particular problems shows the public that their needs are being heard and respected.

 

Be agile

There’s no question that technology has made it easier for public sector agencies and governments to engage the public. Governments today have more means of communication at their disposal than they had fifty years ago. Social media channels like Twitter and Facebook have joined more traditional channels like print and television, offering more options and platforms that could be used for direct, unmediated communications with the public.

Accustomed to fast, frictionless interactions, the public now expects the same level of service quality and communication timeliness from their government. This is the new challenge faced by many public sector agencies. Public sector communication needs to be as good as the best in any industry. It needs to be fast, accurate and able to reach the audience wherever they are.

This is done by knowing what kind of content is best pushed on what channels. Each has their use. Old school government press releases may not reach as many people but are useful for media outlets to get information. In contrast, posting infographics or short videos on sharable platforms like Facebook and Twitter are great ways to disperse information across the general public. Pushing targeted reminders on social media and airing educational videos that promote behaviour change can be the difference between pushing information that can change decisions, outcomes and lives – and advice that goes ignored.

 

Leverage on social media

One platform in particular that governments should leverage upon is social media. Why? Firstly, platforms like Twitter and Facebook give public sector agencies and governments the chance to engage in direct dialogue with the public. It also gives the people a chance to engage back.

In addition, traditional media platforms are expensive. Social media can be a more cost-efficient platform to communicate, seed and amplify issues that the public needs to know about on a platform that they are already frequenting – and the ability to leverage on data allows governments to tailor content and messaging to a target audience. Studies have found that about half of people in the UK[3] and two-thirds of Americans[4] get their news on social media – and we expect the rest of the world isn’t any different. However, the downside of social media is that a lot of the news circulating on such platforms tends to be inaccurate and unreliable, encouraging the spread of fake news.

Herein lies an opportunity for governments and public sector agencies to step up and assume the lead in delivering both factual and authoritative information. An edge that government social media accounts have over private ones is their access to a massive amount of information such as socio-economic data and research – making it easier for people to recognise their accounts as credible. For example, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has turned its Twitter page into an FAQ resource on the coronavirus, debunking myths like eating garlic to prevent infection. Given widespread global anxiety over the coronavirus, this is both in line with the WHO’s mandate of promoting good healthcare as well as addressing an issue that people are actively searching for on social media.

 

What has been done?

The role of effective public sector communication is to establish foundation support. With a strong foundation of awareness and understanding, the public will find it easier to distinguish fact from fiction.

The UK has adopted a ‘digital by default’ model in 2012 to make government services so easy to access online that it becomes the natural place for people to go to.[5] It also means being open, transparent, collaborative and being open to service-users (the public) helping to shape the services offered and decision-making processes.[6] For communications, this means designing communications tactics and approaches around the web as a core channel rather than as an afterthought.

Malaysia has also followed suit, launching a multi-pronged approach to address concerns about the coronavirus. Since news of the virus spread, all government channels have been broadcasting information about the disease and preventive measures citizens could take to combat the spread of the disease. This information has been pushed on television, radio, social media as well as through an online news portal, Sebenarnya.my, which had been set up to debunk fake news stories.

Combatting the spread of fake news is one thing. Creating effective public sector communications is still an ongoing process for many governments and agencies around the world. But the prevalence of fake news on the coronavirus has taught us one thing: information (fake or otherwise) spreads extremely quickly on the internet. Effective public sector communications needs to be just as quick and agile to reach the public wherever they are. It needs to be tailored to specific audiences and clearly articulated. And above all, it needs to be engaging and interesting.

An engaged public is a happy one. And when governments keep the public engaged, it’s easier to build trust and assure the public that Big Brother is listening in the right manner and not being offensively intrusive.

 

 

[1] The Verge, 2020

[2] AdAge, 2013

[3] Ofcom, 2019

[4] Pew Research Centre, 2018

[5] UK Government Digital Strategy, 2012

[6] NCVO, 2014