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SM Group of Companies
SM Group’s new corporate office -The headquarters of the 21st century
When talking about one-stop shopping, dining, amusement, and entertainment convenience, along side a wide selection of reasonably priced merchandise and services at carefully selected specialty retail outlets, restaurants, and leisure facilities all in one huge venue, the SM Group of Companies, one of the country's largest retailing conglomerates, knows the right stuff.
As the leading and largest owner, developer and operator of shopping mall complexes in the Philippines, the SM Group is headed by Henry Sy, Sr., the Philippines' acknowledged retail leader and one of its best regarded business tycoons.
The SM Group has been widely known in retailing for decades through Shoemart, Inc. department store chain and the SM Supermarket chain. The SM Group is also into banking, real estate development, tourism and entertainment.
Retail builders
The SM Group through its member company, SM Prime Holdings, Inc., has been acquiring strategically located tracts of land for mall development purposes since it was incorporated in January 1994. Its task is to consolidate its existing shopping mall operations, to develop other malls and related business interests. These acquisitions are based on the opportunities for attractive asset appreciation and revenue streams, and local area development.
As a corporate citizen, the company believes in developing high-value added shopping malls as a social contribution to Philippine society because it helps enhance the quality of life in the malls' localities.
In addition to striving toward continuous customer satisfaction, the SM Group keeps on providing employment opportunities to thousands of Filipinos, as well as entrepreneurial opportunities to its tenants, suppliers, developers and designers of world-class, distinctly Philippine-made products.
Furthermore, the SM Group commits itself to maintaining its leadership in the shopping mall industry, with emphasis on developing merchandising expertise and professional management in the country. It also aims to be the operator of the biggest malls in Asia.
It now owns and operates 14 super malls with a total gross floor area of 2 million square meters. Eight malls are in Metro Manila, and one each in Cavite, Cebu, Iloilo, Pampanga, Davao and Cagayan de Oro. Three more malls are currently under construction, one in Bulacan, another in Lucena, and another in Baguio, for an additional 250,000 square meters of mall space.
Overseas, the SM Group has constructed two malls in China. It is now looking at other economic centers in that country to construct several other malls in different locations.
It plans to put up two to three more malls a year. It will be opening two this year, and two more in the pipeline next year, and two malls each year till 2006.
State-of-the-art complex
With these developments and dynamic mall activities, SM Group again made a bold yet strategic move of putting together all of the company’s corporate offices in one huge venue, a vision similar to constructing a super mall.
SM Prime Holdings, Inc. facility
Located at the reclamation area in Roxas Boulevard, SM Group’s corporate headquarters now houses six fully wired and interconnected buildings via fiber optic connection, covering 42,900 square meters of space. The executive offices, department store group, engineering group, investment group, and operations people are now located at the headquarters.
With 2,500 to 3,000 people going to work in SM Group’s new home, visitors ranging from a few hundreds to thousands go in on a daily basis to transact business with SM Group’s various departments.
According to Noel Sanchez, AVP at SM Investments Corp., SM group has plans of putting up additional buildings to serve as locations for call center operations. “We intend to submit an application for SM Group’s headquarters as a state-of-the-art IT zone to the PEZA (Philippine Economic Zone Authority) for IT Zone accreditation.
The SM Group plans to accommodate call center activities in the complex. “Initially, we need to provide space in one of the existing buildings. Eventually, as these call centers expand, we may have to put up a separate building for them. There are in fact plans to put up three more buildings of this type to be conducive for call center operations.
The complex’s telecommunication facilities were provided by Philippine Long Distance and Telephone Co., while Fujitsu Philippines provided the internal PABX communication system, with over 800 lines.
Kelsey Hartigan-Go, AVP for Information Technology at SM Prime Holdings, Inc. revealed that the company is looking to expand its PABX to Voice over IP (VoIP). As far as expanding the ICT infrastructure, he stressed that all its new ICT facilities are sufficient enough for the demands of the users. “Right now, we don’t know what will happen next. The SM group is very dynamic. We create new companies and new business at a snap of the finger, and we need to be able to respond to that very quickly. And the ICT facilities, including the PABX system, have the ability to let us do so.
Wired synergy
Before the SM Group headquarters was constructed, Sanchez said the company’s offices were situated in separate locations, bugging down interoffice coordination. Hartigan-Go claimed the best thing that happened after moving to the new corporate site is responsiveness.
“Since this is the first time we are moving into a new facility and concentrated all our corporate offices here, there are so many changes. I guess the responsiveness to the change provided ease of communication between one department office to another. Sanchez noted, “The guiding principle of the building is flexibility. There are no fixed walls or partitions to make it flexible to serve various uses. It can actually be dismantled to create a new complex in a matter of weeks if we want to. Everything is modular.
Both parties agreed that this new facility changed the way the SM Group does business.
“We have better coordination now. Before, with offices in various locations, doing coordination was very difficult. We have internal shuttles for easier transport. Secondly, since everything and everybody are just a local call away, it makes the pace of productive business faster,Hartigan-Go said.
Sanchez quickly added, “Even our clients and suppliers are comfortable now to conducting business with us. They only have to go to one location and there is no problem in parking. Finally, it’s free. When somebody goes to Ortigas area, the Makati area, or even the Quiapo area, there is always difficulty in parking. It makes it more customer friendly. And this is good for our foreign visitors.
Hartigan-Go pointed out that the two most important benefits that the new SM Group headquarters brings are close coordination and synergy.
Inevitable change
Since these world-class improvements were not executed before because the SM Group of companies were geographically dispersed, Hartigan-Go said the FPI PABX solution has indeed provided the business value the company requires to create new opportunities due to easier communication.
“The SM Group is into retail, the direction is always looking at value for money - when you buy something, you get the most value out of it. With FPI, we meet eye to eye in terms of value for money,he stressed. “There has been too many changes like moving from different locations to one central location. Changes are inevitable from the initial plan. To be able to undergo these changes, we need to be responsive and FPI has been responsive to these changes.
Indeed, SM Group inevitably responded to these significant movements because its commitment to contribute to national development has been consistent with an end view in mind. The company aims to leave a legacy of enhancing quality of life by being the builder of the biggest mall in Asia and hopefully in the world.
