[SeoulTech x Dong-A.com Joint Planning] Seoul National University of Science and Technology (hereinafter referred to as SeoulTech) operates various support programs to aid the growth of startups, such as preliminary and early startup packages, makerspaces, and global collaboration. Furthermore, in partnership with Dong-A.com, it provides global news to assist startups in overseas promotion and expansion, introducing promising deep-tech startups both domestically and internationally.
- It is heard that you started as an engineer and accumulated various experiences in the related industry. What led you to engage in sales?
: After graduating with a master's degree in computer engineering, I worked as an engineer for a long time. However, I thought it was important to hear the voices from the field directly, so I also became a project manager (PM). Through this, I performed various tasks over 20 years, including the introduction of the Dong-A Ilbo ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) system and the advancement project of the National Emergency Management Agency.
The ERP domain includes HR management, HR evaluation, and recruitment management, which led me to take an interest in HR systems, and later, I joined an HR specialized company. My experience as an engineer helped in sales as well. While working on various projects, I often went out for technical support, and customers responded better when I, who knew the field well, explained it compared to other PMs or salespeople.
- What made you focus on the potential of the HR-related market?
: Existing HR-related system packages were mostly part of SI (System Integration) development, requiring a lot of costs and manpower. Unlike delivering products like Excel or PowerPoint, it required a very difficult process of construction and optimization, often taking more than a year and sometimes costing billions of KRW.
As the importance of human resource management is being highlighted, I thought this market would expand significantly. During this time, I joined a large ERP company in the early 2010s, where I took on HR consulting and technical sales roles. After working for over ten years, I thought it would be possible to develop a more concise and flexible HR system, and to realize this dream, I became independent in 2022 and established my company. The result of this is 'QFit HR.'
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Additionally, one of the features highly valued by our customers is the 'Evaluation Progress Management' feature. It provides an intuitive screen of progress status and progress rate according to the achievement details (figures) of each evaluation item. This allows for easy management of goal achievement indicators and proactive response to various issues.
Conversely, there are also large companies. Recently, we secured a contract with a large general hospital with 12,000 employees. We might be the first company to supply a domestic HR evaluation system to a company with over 10,000 employees.
We also have many public institution clients. Although we cannot disclose specific institution names, we have cases of adoption in a public research institute related to national defense, and it is also used in various local governments and public enterprises. Ansan Urban Development, a public enterprise in Jeju, Icheon City, and the Korea Automobile Insurance Compensation Promotion Agency are representative examples. We have set various license fee pricing sections according to company size for this reason.
- It seems like a significant achievement for a startup to succeed in securing contracts with large companies. Were there any difficulties in the process?
: The most challenging parts are sales capability and talent acquisition. No matter how well I did sales before, there is a world of difference between a company with many achievements doing sales and a completely new startup doing sales.
However, in the case of the large hospital we recently secured, despite our company's small size, they conducted a PoC (Proof of Concept) with an open mind. After verifying the value of our product through this verification process, they decided to adopt it. Such cases are gradually increasing, which is a great encouragement.
- It is heard that you utilized SeoulTech's global collaboration program. How helpful was it in reality?
: Startups have to do sales for investment and develop technology, but it is challenging to do both due to their small size. We focused on technology development and supplemented our lacking capabilities by applying for the global collaboration program provided by the Ministry of SMEs and Startups and SeoulTech with 'AI-based HR system advancement' and were selected.
Thanks to this, we received support for various costs, including labor costs, which was a great help, and it laid the foundation to secure larger clients by advancing our technology.
Additionally, collaborating with a global company like Oracle is a great help. We are expanding our global network and strengthening marketing through this. We plan to conduct an investment forum linked with Seoul City in September and will soon visit Oracle's headquarters in the U.S. Advanced cloud and AI technologies of OCI (Oracle Cloud Infrastructure) have been applied to our business.
AI-translated with ChatGPT. Provided as is; original Korean text prevails.
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