BeMyGuest’s CTO on living with Covid, remote working and building software during a pandemic
BEING in Cornwall, after not having left Singapore in more than two years, has given Ross Riley, CTO of BeMyGuest a different outlook on several things.
For one, it’s given him a more positive outlook on travel and a view of what life could be, living with Covid. “Here, Covid is very much in the background. People don’t talk about it that much, they wear their masks in public transport and supermarkets but it’s in the background.
“People are also travelling freely. There’s talk that there will be a good ski season ahead and anticipation that Europeans will travel for warmer climes in the south this winter,” said Riley, who returned to Cornwall two weeks ago to visit his family.
This has given him more optimism about the industry he works in. “Singapore will lag, as well as the rest of Asia, but it’s good to see so much pent-up demand being unleashed,” said Riley, who joined BMG about four years ago, first as tech lead and then rising to CTO two years ago.
For another, it’s proven that he, and his tech team, can work from anywhere. While BeMyGuest has always embraced remote work, the pandemic forced a full scale shift to “everything online”, said Riley. “All the building blocks were there, but the pandemic forced us to assemble them and take the whole process online.”
“One thing we thought we would miss was the kick-off product meeting – three to five people in a room brainstorming – but we adapted that with video conferencing and Slack. It also gave software engineers uninterrupted time to focus on work. When you are in the office, there’s admin and teams to look after,” said Riley.
The thing the team misses most though is the “socialisation” – “grabbing a drink after work where you don’t talk about work but get to know each other on a personal basis. That’s hard to do remotely.”
Through the pandemic, Riley said he was able to keep his tech team intact – and here’s the silver lining of Covid for travel tech leaders like him. It gave the team time to develop new product.
“By giving them control of projects, and giving them responsibility, and seeing the direct impact of what they do, we were able to keep people. To shift a feature or product, see it generate revenue and bring features to a network of suppliers – that’s the advantage of working in startups for software engineering talent, that they are not one in a 1,000 headcount doing maintenance work.”
What BMG has been building the past 20 months is a complementary software business to its traditional distribution business which was clearly impacted by the pandemic.
“Pre-pandemic, a lot of our revenues came from the distribution side, high volume, low margins, huge transactions, and we dealt with those challenges. That stopped clearly and we moved to developing software systems. It’s given us more time to breathe and focus on product.”
For example, it developed Xplore WebPOS, a web-based point of sale (POS) system, for offline transactions. The software module is designed for activity operators to sell faster over the counter. It has been created specifically for travel activity operations as an alternative solution to more traditional and generic style POS systems, which do not fit the unique scope of needs for this sector.
Its Xplore solution now offers a suite of tools from e-commerce store, online payments, booking dashboard, e-tickets and mobile scanner, promo codes and customer data and reviews.
“These new features will make suppliers more efficient, automating processes, reporting, access control and purchasing tickets, and reduce the manpower needed to staff the attractions,” said Riley.
One lesson he has learnt is to say no to requests from customers “for features we can’t scale”. “We do get lots of requests asking, can you do this? The first question we ask is, can it be scaled? Does it fit within the umbrella of a software product or is it unique to this customer?”
Riley is confident that the distribution leg of the business will come back. “Before the pandemic, things were looking really positive and we were hitting some real numbers. Maybe it will come back better in some ways – less efficient operators would have left the market.
“Now we have carved out a second complementary business and allowed us to pay attention to it. It may not have as much revenues as the distribution side but it is good for sticky revenues. E The more we digitise the industry, the bigger the pie for everyone.”
While he acknowledges the competition as consumer facing brands in the same space pivoted to develop B2B products, he said, “The main purpose of BeMyGuest is to service the B2B market, we have no B2C business and so we are not going to have other interests when the market comes back.”
Another advantage BeMyGuest has is that because it has its roots in Asia – “in some ways, Asia is the toughest because of the localization and language requirements” – it will be able to scale its product globally, and already it is seeing traction in markets such as Australia and New Zealand, and South America and Mexico. “Our future goal is to build the software and scale it globally,” said Riley.
Asked if there was a dream product he’d love to build in the space, he said, “It might be interesting to work with something bigger in the consumer space – for example, augmented reality or virtual reality apps to promote attractions.”
See, it’s amazing what travel can do to inspire big ideas and shift perspectives, and Riley, enjoying the fresh sea air of Cornwall, would be the first to agree.
