HISTORY

Rhythm started its involvement in the ICT industry when it first introduced its IQ Loyalty Smart Card solution as the marketing and management tool for its Rhythm Bookstore chain outlets (under its associate company, Altimutiara Sdn Bhd) in September 1999. This IQ Loyalty Smart Card solution has been operated and managed by Rhythm ICT Services Sdn Bhd (RISSB) (previously known as IQ Card Services Sdn Bhd) since then till now.

In 2001, Rhythm continued its smart card solution initiative through Rhythm Technologies Sdn Bhd (RTSB) by proposing the incorporation of smart card loyalty application with MasterCard in the national Europay/MasterCard/Visa (“EMV”) migration for credit/debit cards. In the same year, RTSB had also worked closely with Gemplus and made a proposal to The Ministry of Finance (“MOF”) to act as a Terminal Migration Organization (“TMO”) for the EMV migration in Malaysia. The whole TMO concept is to help reduce the cost of credit/debit card transactions by enabling an ideal seamless transmission and creating a standard platform complying with the EMV requirements and standardized ISO 8583 format for all financial institutions. RTSB received an approval for the proposal from MOF in June 2003 but was unable to implement it due to several oppositions from competing vendors and financial institutions.

Nevertheless, RTSB continues to see the potential in the payment industry and had commenced several terminal deployments and maintenance services with several financial institutions. Continuing the enterprise, in 2004, RTSB entered into an arrangement with Way Systems Inc of Boston, USA to adopt their Mobile Transaction Terminals (“MTT”) solution into enabling credit/debit card payment via mobile terminal. MTT is the first mobile card-accepting device that transmits via server, unlike most terminals that go direct to the host. Resultant to some research and development on the solution, RTSB had proposed to Visa and Eon Bank to utilize the system for their business-to-business (“B2B”) transaction – the first B2B card transaction that uses terminal to be implemented in Malaysia. Eon Bank and Visa launched their “Eon Bank Visa Distribution Card” on November 15, 2006; with RTSB acts as their exclusive technology partner.

In tandem, following to RTSB’s other terminal business initiative, in 2005, RTSB entered into an arrangement with Datalink Healthcare Network Sdn Bhd to deploy and maintain a nationwide network of EDC terminals at their 1,900 MediLink panel clinics. Datalink uses this network of terminals to capture real-time claim transactions for its out-patient medical claims management operation for ING. In 2006, RTSB entered into a similar arrangement with R-Medic Sdn Bhd, another company in the similar nature of business, to deploy another 1,500 terminals for their panel clinics. With that, RTSB will have a total of more than 3,000 EDC terminals deployed at the majority of clinics in the country – of which is the largest EDC terminal network in the healthcare industry in Malaysia.

Back to the year 2001, besides developing the smart card solution initiative into the terminal and payment industry through RTSB, Rhythm had also taken on its smart card solution into Campus Management System (“CMS”) application solution in the education industry – a development undertaken by its Group’s IS support team. Subsequent to its first successful CMS implementation at Penang Skill Development Center (PSDC) in 2002, Rhythm had embarked into another smart card and CMS development localization exercise via RISSB/IQCS in 2004 with Khrung Thai Bank in Bangkok for thousands of sponsored schools and colleges in Thailand. However, after almost a year of wearying customization, that project was aborted due to unwarranted deal and lack of commitment by the project owner.

But again, Rhythm accepted that stumble and looked optimistically into the ICT opportunities in the education industry. In June 2006, after taking a much wider approach of systems integration and a more prudent account management effort within the education sector, RISSB/IQCS was awarded with a contract worth of RM 11.5 million by the University of Technology Mara (UiTM) to implement their smart card Campus Management System (CMS), some network enhancement exercise, Facilities Management System (FMS), and Enterprise Application Integration (EAI). With this contract, Rhythm strongly believes that it would be the stepping stone to the Group’s ICT Division to shape the progress of its endeavor to be amongst the key ICT vendors in the Malaysian ICT scene. To date, Rhythm, via RISSB/IQCS, has developed trading alliances and relationships with HP, Oracle, Cisco, Archibus, Kronos, as well as with their corresponding channel partners; to further leverage on the project experience into developing more businesses of similar nature and mix within the focused education, financial institutions, and healthcare industries.

While it is important to understand how history has shaped our ICT core specific competencies and product/services portfolio, it is more crucial to continuously motivate our innovation and improvised adaptations; so as to enable us to identify the particular skills and functional areas, those to be enhanced and developed – towards a much faster implementation speed and sustainable competitive advantage.

We need to accelerate the pace of change in the market-place so that it makes it more difficult for our competitors to keep up with our moves. If we can move faster than our competitors, then this speed creates our sustainable competitive advantage. Implementation speed enables a company to be more aggressive, to stay out front, and to defend itself better in highly turbulent markets.