It pays to strike while the iron is hot, especially in the furore of a pre-GST era and then the current pre-SST business landscape. Sensing an opportunity amid uncertainty, Chartered Accountant Derek Wong Yew Fei co-founder of KAC Advisory Services (KAC), established a firm which specialises in GST advisory services in the year 2012 and currently the firm is involved in SST advisory services.
Back then, Derek and five other associates took the first step by enrolling themselves in a specialised GST training course for consultants, which was jointly organised by the Malaysian Institute of Accountants (MIA) and the Royal Malaysian Customs Department (RMCD). For all the promises this business niche held, the early days were slow due to an underdeveloped client database. Simply put, businesses did not know that KAC existed. This entailed getting creative with their client outreach, without compromising on much needed GST knowledge.
Thus, this led Derek to reroute for an alternative source of income, by offering GST training services rather than just GST consultancy alone. He rightly pointed out that the training services would help with market penetration. For this, Derek took up another course called “Train the Trainer” organised by the Human Resources Development Fund (HRDF).
Initially, when KAC began operations, its biggest challenge was convincing business owners that GST was in fact going to be enforced in Malaysia. True enough, demand for KAC’s training services began to grow positively in 2014. The team began conducting public GST training in numerous hotels. Additionally, the firm was also engaged to conduct inhouse training for companies located everywhere from the Klang Valley, Penang, Johor and East Malaysia. Then, in 2015, with the GST implementation just around the corner, KAC received an overwhelming number of clients. Companies ranging from small business to large corporations such as Berjaya Air Sdn Bhd, Haier Electrical Appliances (M) Sdn Bhd and Toshiba Transmission & Distribution Systems Asia Sdn Bhd, began registering for GST training and implementation services, and KAC’s business reached a peak.
With further height of training achievement, Derek was engaged by Persatuan Kastam to be one of its collaborating trainers to emphasize on GST compliance and assurance. This particular training session saw a huge number of participants which was unprecedented, nearly 1,000 participants attended this training back in 2017.
Then towards the SST re-entry, Derek conducted comprehensive research on the depth of SST with countless visits to Royal Malaysian Customs offices from Kelana Jaya, West Port, Penang, Johor Bahru to Putrajaya. Prior to the implementation of the new Sales Tax & Service Tax 2018, KAC managed to train up to approximately 900 participants, and by the end of December 2018, the figure reached 1,500 participants from all areas of the business industries.
Today, moving forward in the training industry, Derek has teamed up with Mr Jaykay Teoh, a seasoned marketing entrepreneur with accounting background. Jaykay Teoh’s expertise and experience complements Derek’s business acumen. Derek also has in his team, Mr Lee Jia-Jin, a close apprentice turned young partner who is a bright upcoming professional with lots of potential. Together they have set up a new brand for the training division, it’s now called AccTEC Training meaning “Accounting Technician Excellent Centre”, designed to provide training and knowledge transfer to senior finance executives including entry level accounting personnel, so that they will be trained to be practical in fulfilling their daily job challenges, and have the required knowledge and training to comply with stringent reporting requirements from the relevant authorities.