In early 2022, KONE held an important event in Ho Chi Minh City. In addition to the key personnel of this Finnish corporation, special guests are limited, including the Ambassador of Finland in Vietnam, partners – loyal customers who are directly distributing or using KONE elevator and I attended as General Secretary of Vietnam Elevator Association (VNEA). I was quite surprised by the way KONE treated me and VNEA as a VIPs.

Perhaps, through the meeting at the event, the leaders and managers of KONE are very eager to share about what they can do and also the existing realities of the business, so that VNEA wants to convey a larger message to the elevator industry, contributing to the overall development of Vietnam’s elevator market.

I appreciate that KONE has not kept “business secrets”, which could be exploited by competitors, affecting their development strategy. KONE has put its trust in us like that.

In 2022, we also had the opportunity to visit and work at the largest elevator manufacturing and assembly factories in Vietnam. Even before, business leaders were still afraid for many reasons. Meeting them, we feel the spirit of national pride flowing strongly. Businesses all understand that wanting to do “something for themselves” is extremely difficult and the market is very harsh, but they still choose their own path because “maybe Vietnamese hands and brains don’t have capacity” because “would everything have to be imported?”

They also “reveal” and share research, innovations, and improvement ideas that can benefit the development of the elevator industry. Things that have always been considered secrets, are sweat, effort and even blood, so it is not easy to share.

This shows that domestic enterprises are also ready to cooperate, unify and share to grow together. The unequal wars with imported goods is a “pain” for Vietnamese businesses. The products “Make in Vietnam” reaching out to the world are the aspiration of Vietnamese elevator enterprises.

We also work and visit factories of FDI enterprises, which have strong financial potential and are well invested with the support of a national ecosystem. They are also facing difficulties because of the consequences of the pandemic, the market is going down at the right time to start up and try to maintain output for products when there is no market share…

They also want to be transparent about sharing business information with businesses, with their customers. And VNEA, Elevator Magazine has created trust for them to share such wishes.

Through a lot of contact, I feel that the business has kept “secrets” for too long and there is no one to open up about the hidden corners of the profession, but their businesses are the “cases study” – a typical case.

Fierce competition in the “red ocean”, especially price competition, is squeezing the elevator industry, and this is considered by business leaders to be completely unprofitable for customers. Besides a few businesses that have chosen their own path in terms of products and services, the majority of Vietnamese enterprises are participating in a price race. A director of company even compare it as riding a motorbike in the city at rush hour, if you stop, there will be lots of vehicle pass. According to common sense, competition is the driving force of society’s development, but the other side of it will happen when businesses forget business ethics and customers’ rights. At that time, it is likely that they will reduce the quality of products and services, benefiting customers based on the monopoly on equipment and replacement parts periodically to compensate for the competitive price reduction to sell new products.

Or the training and coaching of personnel also have many shortcomings. Never in any industry sector is the personnel in the industry as comfortable as the elevator industry. Are personnel trained or not? Is there enough capacity to be allowed to “touch” the product? God know!

There are many cases where personnel who have been disciplined in this business can easily find a job in another company, even a rival company. Of course when they go, they take with them part of the secret of the business. So much so, a business director even joked that, without training, focus on headhunting in the market.

In fact, there are also businesses that have not yet “opened their hearts”. Caution is perhaps necessary in the context of non-transparent competition. Ideas that have not yet been implemented have already been done by others. Or a product under research that has not yet been released has a fake on the market.

But in today’s flat world, nothing is a secret anymore, the strength of each business probably lies in its people, in its culture, which cannot be imitated. Strategies for development, product improvement, etc. of the business will remain secret if it is in the head of the leader or shared in a small group. But in order to implement the strategy, it must be disseminated to all employees. And the fact that “not shown in the house, outside already knew” is probably a… normal thing.

And so, instead of trying to hide and keep secrets, choosing to share information for cooperation will bring more value to each business and community.

Elevator businesses are probably ready for this, I suppose. The presence and comments of many leaders of large elevator companies at the Conference “Orientation for the development of Vietnam’s elevator industry in the context of globalization” was organized by VNEA in early December 2022 in Ho Chi Minh City is an example.

For its part, the Vietnam Elevator Association also needs to make more efforts. Cooperation activities, trade promotion, technology transfer… from organizations and countries with developed elevator industry will be constantly promoted. In addition, connecting and uniting domestic enterprises to advise state management agencies to issue a common orientation and a common policy for the development of the elevator industry will have to be given top priority.

We still need more business flight. There will be more times to sleep at the hotel than at home, in the morning to exchange in Hanoi, in the afternoon to have a conference in Saigon, like shuttles, connecting people and businesses with the same values.

Above all, we should not isolate ourselves during a very busy life./.