The Multimedia Development Corp (MDeC) and SME Corporation Malaysia (formerly Smidec) has teamed up to enhance the competitiveness of local small and medium enterprises through the MSC Malaysia SCORE+ Programme.

MDeC CEO Datuk Badlisham Ghazali said at the launch on Dec 9 that the programme was developed with two goals in mind:
•    to act as a scorecard for local MSC-status companies to help grow their effectiveness and competitiveness in the global marketplace; and
•    to create a uniform rating and profiling system that can be shared across multiple levels of industry, while enabling MDeC to accurately identify the strengths of individual companies and follow up with appropriate support.

SCORE+ was developed by SME Corp in 2007 as the SCORE Programme and expanded by MDeC.

“Moving companies up the value chain means having to efficiently and critically analyse companies and determine their performance holistically, and not judge them solely by their financial performance,” said Badlisham.

Datuk Hafsah Hashim, CEO of SME Corp, said SCORE+ would benefit participating companies by creating awareness of their capabilities, opening avenues to potential funding by MDeC and SME Corp, and providing a new outlook on their business models.

“As Malaysia moves from a predominantly industrial-based economy into a knowledge and innovation-based one, so will our SMEs be prepared to compete on a level playing field in the globalised marketplace through the SCORE+ Programme,” added Hafsah.

The programme includes the BaseSCORE, which reveals the position of a company in relation to its Top 5 products and services, key target markets, financial performance and workforce strength. BaseSCORE together with the Quarterly Industry Reporting replaces the annual MDeC Impact Survey, which gauges the overall performance of companies with respect to their revenue, R&D expenditure, and job and IP creation. There are over 1,700 active MSC-status companies.

The MSC Malaysia SCORE+ Programme is a framework which ties the two components together, with additional ICT-specific questions to further capture the fundamentals of what makes a company competitive. Upon completion of the survey, companies will receive a rating that describes the current state of the company’s growth and competitiveness, ranging from one star to five stars, with the latter being the best.

For more information on the SCORE+ Programme, call MSC Malaysia Client Contact Centre (CliC) at 1-800-88-8338 (toll free), or visit www.mscmalaysia.my



This article appeared in Manager@work, the monthly management pullout of The Edge Malaysia, Issue 790, Jan 25-31, 2010