In this session, we are delighted to welcome Chris, founder of Zubbily and an Odoo Silver Partner in Hong Kong, to share his journey from the finance industry to IT services, and discuss the challenges and solutions for Hong Kong SMEs undergoing digital transformation.
💼 Zubbily's Founding Story and Cross-Industry Move
Q: Chris, could you share the story of Zubbily's founding and growth?
A (Chris): The story goes back to 2012. My partner Ryan and I left our previous institution and founded ZB Capital, specializing in private equity, venture capital, and startup investments. We did that for many years.
After investing in numerous cases and gaining experience, we realized we needed to provide deeper services to our internal portfolio companies. So, we established our own accounting firm, financial services team, and IT team to support them.
When our internal clients were very satisfied with these services, we realized this could be a business, allowing us to promote these successful experiences and services to external clients. Sharing is caring—since we were doing well, we should serve others outside who have this need.
Q: How did you discover and ultimately choose Odoo as your core digital transformation tool?
A (Chris): While traveling in Europe, I started noticing many Odoo advertisements and became aware of the brand. Later, returning to Asia for startup investment and M&A in Southeast Asia, I continued to see Odoo ads and realized its brand visibility was very high, suggesting many people were using it.
When our investment business returned to Hong Kong, we began seriously researching Odoo, from the Odoo 16 era all the way to the current Odoo 19 version. I found that its features are improving every year, especially showing great progress in finance, data analysis, and automation. Therefore, we decided to unify our subsidiaries onto Odoo and founded Zubbily specifically to help Hong Kong SMEs implement this system.
⚙️ Cross-Industry Challenges and Implementation Difficulties
Q: Moving from Finance to IT, did you encounter any difficulties or "hit a wall" (encountered setbacks)?
A (Chris): Of course, it was challenging. Initially, we were very familiar with Odoo internally. But when you have to go out and promote it to clients, that's two different worlds, it's another matter entirely. We weren't initially an IT services company; we were simply extending our services.
We spent a lot of time learning: What does an SME truly want? We clearly understood the needs of our internal portfolio companies, but when serving hundreds of different industries, they all have unique requirements. We had to quickly learn and understand the operations of more industries to truly meet their needs.
Q: What is the toughest challenge to handle when implementing a new system?
A (Chris): The hardest thing to manage is people. This conflict mainly revolves around workload. The boss pays the salary and doesn't care how many tasks you have to deal with. But bosses often don't realize that during the period of implementing a new system, employees are essentially doing repetitive work.
Employees think: "My old system is working fine, no problems. Why is the boss making me use a new one?" They only remember one thing: I can't leave work at 6 PM. Even if the boss offers overtime pay, many employees who value work-life balance are unwilling. This is the biggest resistance.
Q: How does Zubbily handle employee resistance to new systems to achieve a "Triple Win" scenario?
A (Chris): As Odoo partners, our job is to:
Tell employees where the real benefits lie: Let them know that while they might work hard for two months now, their future work will be easier, and they might even leave earlier than 6 PM (though that depends on their boss).
Actively share the workload: We ask employees to tell us where they feel the work is repetitive or most difficult, and list it out. We then discuss with the boss, and Zubbily's team takes responsibility for these extra parts, such as data migration or data cleansing.
This way, we charge a small fee, but the work is done faster and more accurately. Employees don't have to work 1.5 hours overtime; perhaps only half an hour. This results in a Double Win (for the boss and employees), plus the Odoo product, making it a Triple Win.
🌐 Core Reasons for Choosing Odoo
Q: Zubbily tried many products; what made you ultimately choose Odoo as your core partner?
A (Chris): Like many business owners, we consider how easy it is to switch systems. In our experience, Odoo's migration is very easy, which is a significant advantage. The core benefits of promoting Odoo are threefold:
1. Cost-Effectiveness and Integration
Odoo offers exceptional cost-effectiveness. One price grants access to numerous applications and features. With many other ERP brands, if you want to add a few modules, you face constant "add-ons, add-ons, more add-ons," or the feature doesn't exist, forcing you to connect other external systems. This is like playing with Lego pieces—it significantly impacts scalability, efficiency, and carries high risk. Odoo can meet most needs within its single ecosystem.
2. Open Source and Technological Edge
A major advantage of Odoo is Open Source. This allows for the scalability and flexibility you need. Many competitors are closed-source and lack this agility. Additionally:
Rapid Iteration: Odoo updates quickly, unlike some systems that might not change for a decade.
Data Sovereignty: Odoo uses an open-source database system (PostgreSQL), meaning you always control your data. You can easily output and extract data using custom dimensions, which is a definitive advantage.
3. Unique Strengths in Financial Functionality
Odoo's advantage in accounting is particularly outstanding because this is our original strength:
Deep Integration with Other Modules: Many market accounting systems are limited when connecting to modules like Sales, Purchase, Inventory, or HR. Odoo ensures that when other processes change, your accounting module can be customized to synchronize and cooperate, preventing a "sudden break in the connection."
Unlimited Data Analysis Dimensions: This is a crucial pain point for operators. Odoo allows for unlimited custom dimensions for accounting data analysis, which is vital for deeply understanding business operations.
Support for Multi-Company Structures (No Extra Charge): Odoo supports integrating data from multiple companies within the system and even allows for consolidated reporting, offering an absolute advantage.
🎯 Success Cases and Tips for Business Owners
Q: What is the most significant difference clients see after Zubbily assists them?
A (Chris): The first and most important difference is, of course, saving money. But saving money isn't the only thing; overall operational improvement is key.
Take a logistics case, for example: Through our service, we shared experiences from other cases, advising the client that in their industry's operational model, some tasks didn't need to be done internally. For instance, they could outsource their entire warehouse and logistics process to a professional logistics management company.
This client's old system was on-premise and couldn't achieve this data interchange. But after switching to Odoo, combined with our BPaaS business process outsourcing and z-CFO financial management, they could use Odoo to facilitate data exchange, allowing the logistics provider to remotely handle all warehouse-related matters.
The client hadn't realized they could save that money. More importantly, they could re-deploy the released manpower to other, more valuable business activities, rather than simply cutting jobs. This is a perfect example of successfully leveraging Odoo.
Q: What is your most important piece of advice for SME owners currently facing economic challenges?
A (Chris): Every industry is transforming rapidly, especially with the boost from AI technology. While AI is a hot topic, how to truly implement it in one's industry and company is something only the boss or leader knows.
So, the most important tip is: The boss must lead by example. They need to learn, understand, and actually operate the system themselves. This is the only way to more smoothly utilize technology, especially AI, to tackle future challenges.
Q: What tangible benefits has the Odoo Partner Program brought to Zubbily?
A (Chris): I strongly endorse the Odoo Partner Program. It is straightforward and simple, and genuinely provides a Partner Manager to help us navigate this path, offering lots of interaction and dialogue to ensure we deliver a consistent message to the market.
After becoming a partner, Odoo identifies potential clients based on our specialties through various sales channels and refers these opportunities to us for follow-up. This significantly increases the number of potential clients in our sales funnel. The Odoo Partner Program is where they have been most successful.
