We're then we've got so feel free join. Last before we just wanted to chat briefly with you about like the project. Yep, sure. So yeah, it was great meeting you guys and, like, working in, like, quick fashion, like, from the time that you reached out in August and with the, like first, like, our invoice and just, like, we started working, like, at the end of, like, first week of September and finished, like, in October.

Yeah. Pretty much, like, went into production. So I was curious to, like, ask you, like, a few questions and, and just, like, the, the basic question is, like, what prompted you to work with us, like, in the first place?

Okay, I think, first of all, I think, my thanks to you all. I think, particularly, I think it's Irwin, right? Irwin used to be from Navis, right? And, we are a portfolio company under the Navis, Navis group, so, right? And, Irwin helps us in a lot of, IT strategies and directions and all that. So, yeah. So, he knows that I'm always interested to explore AI solutions to help us in terms of our work processes and all that. I think, he did spend some time, and then eventually he came back and then actually, introduced us to Mediar.

And, and I, I'm very happy that actually, like what was mentioned, I think it's very quickly, right, from the time that we get engaged and then the time they went live on production, and now it's running pretty well. And then the, I think it was... And I mean, it's, you know, it's been a fantastic journey and I think it's really very, very, I think we are very, very happy about the, about the results. Yeah.

Yeah. The, re very glad to hear that. Thanks a lot for that feedback. I was, curious about in terms of, like the previous solution that you had, what was, like what prompted you to, like, find, like, an, an alternative and, did you consider, like, other options as well or...

Sure. Okay. I think, okay, the previous solution was actually UiPath, right? Which is an RPA program, right? It's an RPA product, right? And, that was started by my predecessor. So, yeah, when I joined, they were already using it. Okay. But when I... after I. I mean, I, I suppose that when they, when they chose to use RPA back at that point in time, I think that was probably the, the in thing, right?

RPA was an in thing five years ago or something like that. So, right? And everybody trying to jump on to, to UiPath or RPA or whatever, right? But, I think we have actually, look, I mean, after... Subsequently, I know that they, they actually signed up for three projects which, we only managed to get one live going.

Right? I think one of the key thing when I work, when, when I went in, there's only one that is, that, that is working, but there were, there were actually three identified projects. But when I look at it, I felt that it was quite difficult for, quite difficult for RPA to, to be able to do it because that would require a lot of manual intervention.

And, I think the, the, the, I think the thing that I decided to switch out to find something else is because RPA is very much, basically a lot of coding, right? And not so human-friendly. We need to rely very heavily on a vendor. And the license cost, okay, the license cost is quite okay, but the overall, right? The entire cost of running an RPA is actually very, very expensive.

So, right? So when, AI came into the picture, particularly I think over the last year or so. Okay. I mean, it has been around for quite a while, but, particularly in the last couple, last year or so whereby it became so... I mean, it became, it became a very hot topic that everybody talked about. So I thought about, I think that's something that makes a lot of sense because, I've been using some ChatGPT for both some, some, some work on myself and also a lot of my, my, on my, on my own private usage.

But I find it's actually something that is very, very easy to use and, people will be able to pick it up much easier, right? So that's why I try to understand a little bit more and then, from Irwin. And then, Irwin came to Singapore, we had a discussion and he said, "Hey, I think that should be, that could be the one that actually could help us going, right?" And then I think why don't, we look at it and, replace the RPA project, immediately because the license is going to expire.

Right? So, and we do not need to renew it because it was just in time that we managed to save a quite bit of money. And I think that we could actually deploy the funds that we save, into some other, some other projects that we did. Right? I mean, there are, there are, there are two projects that was identified previously between the, accounting team, okay? They have got some of the reconciliations, I think supplies reconciliation as well as the tax context reconciliation.

So I believe that we probably can re-look at it. I think with the very good, start that we already have. I think the... right? And then the, the confidence level from the team after using it, I think has been pretty positive. I think that give us a lot of, will give us a lot of encouragement for us... to, pursue, to, look, to, to, to look at it further.

No, I'm, I'm sure that... I'm sure that if we were to look at it, there are probably many, many other way that we can actually, look into, I mean, in, in terms of deploying, yeah, AI, AI solutions or automated processes within, within the office environment.

Just to summarize what you said, like to understand it better. So, you first worked with a UiPath, that was installed by the previous CFO, when you came, you identified there were, like, three existing RPA projects, but only one of them was finished and two they could not be finished because they required too much, like, human intervention. They not be automated like in the same fashion like the first one. Correct.

But now, since you, implemented Mediar, product, of ours, now you're thinking about, like, the other two projects to, give it also to Mediar, because it seems like they're gonna work. And also you have in mind, like, some other, use cases, some other workflows.

Sure. Yeah, definitely. I think, I think the one, the, the, the, the key reason is, as I mentioned, right? Because RPA requires a lot of hard coding, right? And program codes and all that kind thing. And, and you can't mix decision, right? Basically just, follow yes, no, yes, no, that kind of thing, right? Whatever, whatever that you plan for it or you program it to do, it doesn't change, right?

Not unlike, whereby there could be a certain learning, right? There will be machine learning and, and, and, and, processes that... So I think that would... could be possibility that, certain things that could be done, better within using AI. And I, and I, and I, I, I have a lot of faith in, in AI because I think it is still just the beginning.

I'm sure within the next three to five years, right? The power of AI is going to be probably tens of, of... I mean, even many, many, 10, 10s times that is, that, that is more powerful than now, right? With, with further, I mean, there is so many developers, everybody is looking into it, right? And so much resources are being poured into it. The power of AI I think is going to be really good. I mean, I think nothing can replace it and nothing can better than it. Yeah.

Yeah. That's... Yeah. That's... We are also excited about it, and, that's why we are working on this theme in, in particular. And I, I'm curious, looking, like, comparing the total cost of, like, UiPath and our solution, what would be, like the percentage, rough percentage of the saving that you got?

Okay. We would not know exactly how much, the currently Mediar... I mean, the... in terms of the, the, the usage cost, right? Because, yeah, because I think after we have, we have... probably we run through one month, two month we probably know, but I'm, I'm sure that the, the savings is going to be quite substantial. I think easily 60, 70%. Okay.

But the, but the big thing is that, you know, license apart, okay? In terms of license savings, okay? The other thing that is... the development cost of running each RPA project is actually very, very high, right? So I mentioned that, for example, the one that we... the one that we, the post data posting into development cost, that was charged by the vendor runs into... I think it was either 30 or $40,000. Okay. Just on the development cost alone.

Okay. But I think this one is already considered the simpler process. The next process, I think they were looking at it, I think they say you probably run into 70, 80,000 and then, and then another one will be another 60, 70, 80,000. So you're gonna be... it's gonna be quite expensive in, in that sense, right?

And particularly, I think, you'll be quite irritating because, for RPAs that, every time there is, is a human intervention required to do, to do, to take some decisions, that basically will just stop there and wait for the human to go in. And then, there will be a lot of... I mean, there are probably many, many steps that the, that the human would need to go in. So it doesn't run very seamlessly, that, that they like it to be.

Yeah. And if we are talking about that, then that whole process is, a daily process, very similar to the what, what they are... we are currently doing. Every day we need to do the reconciliation. That means the disruption to the human is actually also going to be something that we... that, that, that, that we are concerned about. Yeah.

Yeah. Totally makes sense. And also Chai, the IT manager, he mentioned that, every time, like, there was, like, an edge case that UiPath doesn't handle, he needs to go back to the vendor like, adjust it and it... they probably charged you as well for

Yes. Yes. That's right. Yeah, yeah. And, and there's actually also a monthly maintenance fee, right? So, yeah. And even if Yeah. It's, it's actually for the support. So every time when the, when, when, when the posting wasn't successful or, or, or they couldn't pull the post data, so he will have got to... he'll try to do it himself, he can't do it, then he'll reach out to the vendor and then, and then the vendor will actually have to, have to, have to charge for, for, for every single time they get involved.

Yeah. So the, the, the cost does add up. Okay. But I think cost apart, I think most important, I think is the... I think we need to have the kind of, the customer experience needs to be something that is comfortable for the customer. If there's too much of disruption, so, right, to, to the user, I mean, the user confidence level is going to be definitely much lower.

Yeah. Yeah. We are just having, like, a call with the Chai after our call here. We're gonna onboard him into our main app where he would be able not only, like, troubleshoot and the execution, but also he would be able to correct, the workflow or create new workflows. So next

Yeah, I think there, I think, yeah, I think it's, yeah, I think that would be very helpful because right, then the effectively, I think, the users are being empowered to, to do, right, certain works on their own, right, without having to keep on referring back to vendors. And we can leave the difficult, the more complicated part to the vendor, but I think simple, simple troubleshooting and simple rectification, I think that is best left with the users. I think that will speed up the whole process, I think, making the entire journey a lot more pleasant.

And now there's a small, question. Like, when, we helped to develop this workflow, and then, like, when we were moving into production, so we had, like, a brief call with you and, the team. And, what made you comfortable to move into production? Because it was like relatively short period, between like development testing and, and the production.

Okay. I think in, I think in terms of that, I think, the success of the, the posting, I think even when we, when we did a small scale on, on, on one outlet, right? I think it, it, it was, it was quite smooth. Okay. I did check in with Chai and, and the team has said, "Hey." Yeah, everything is, is, is quite smooth. And, and basically we have based on whether we use one or we use 10, if it works for one, it should work for 10, right? It will function for everybody.

So, yeah. I think more importantly is I think the, I think the, I think what also give me a lot of confidence is actually in terms of the, the response, by the team and, and by Mediar, in terms of, wanting to get it done, okay, and move, move on and, and very quickly to get it resolved. I think that gave us a lot of, a lot of confidence, that... I mean, even despite there's a, there's a 12 hours time differences but I think we'll be able to work, work together so well.

And, and, and, and, yeah. I think that really gives me the confidence that I think, yeah, I think okay. Yeah, if we test it, I think it works well. Don't worry about it, just go, right?

I think the other thing that, probably I will say that, for this I will, I can, I will, I I will be able to jump in quite quite quickly because I'm, right, because I'm not concerned too much in the event, right, we can't post it, right, or something happened, right, during even after going into production and then to we are not able to, to, to, to get it post successfully. I wouldn't consider it a problem as well because it is not something that is very critical, it's not time critical, right?

If you can't post it today, right, we can probably take a day or two, right, and we still post it together, right? Because you're posting in... it's not a critical, very, kind of critical process, within, within the accounting workflow. So yeah, one or one or two days, we, we, we do have some time that, we can troubleshoot.

But I think more important, I think, being able to just plunge into it, I think also give us a lot also that we basically everybody knows that yeah, we are, we all have our stake in it, let's try to get it, make it, make it, make it work and get it, get it over, right? And rather than, dragging our feet and then the, and then we're just wasting time and then we'd... and then the, the, focus will be off and all that. Yeah.

Yeah. That's, very good to hear that you have, that we had like this, experience of the, in terms of implementation. Thanks a lot for the feedback about like our approach, customer support and like, just communication. I guess, just, the last, kind of question or more like even, like just in terms of our next steps.

So you already mentioned that we can, that you have like in mind like a few workflows, in, that we can automate next. But, we also have like the part of the product where you can, run the software in the passive mode on like an employee, work station, and it will identify, all kinds of workflows that are going on and kind analyze what kind of the workflows are repetitive. Or so it's like, it's like, kind of like a database that you can talk to with like through AI chat to, see what repetitive workflows are there, what workflows are there at all. So, it helps you to kind of have like the right discussion internally and to identify, yeah, what do we want to automate next.

Okay. Okay. I've been... I've actually shared, with my board, just last... was it last Friday or last Thursday? Okay, that, we have moved over from RPA and then we are using Mediar AI. And we managed to, we managed to basically to cut over, right, to, from, from the the entire, the entire project just took about two months. I think they were very pleased with the results.

Again, I did share with them and there's actually many, many other process that, that, that, that I'm looking all... I'm looking forward, to, to embark on. I think they're very, very supportive of this. Yeah.

Yeah, that's, that's really great to hear. So, we're excited as well. Looking forward to it and yeah. Yeah. I, I think maybe what we could do is that, you probably, you, you, you touch base with Jai. With Jai, okay, let's share, I think, I think, based on what I've, mentioned about these projects, maybe, right, you probably think about it and then, discuss with Jai how this can work, right?

So then to... what we could do next is that, I will get Jai and then we will get a pool, the, the, the, the user team will sit in, then we, right, we decide on the goal, on this basis. Then we come back to you and then probably share more with you in terms of how they're currently doing, what's the current workflow, right, and then we can discuss further and based on your... based on your suggestions, like, if there's anything, if there's any additional cost, development cost involved or whatever kind of thing, you can probably share that with me so that actually can include it in, my 2026 budget. Yeah.

Sounds good. Sounds good. Yeah. Excited. Yeah, I guess, I guess that's it for today. Thank you, thank you very much for your, for your time, for, your answers. And yeah, let's, let's touch base, in a, in a few weeks, we'll, we'll keep, keep talking to, like, Jai on regular, like, move forward.