Voicing out Without a Chain Barrier

KNO’s data analytics expertise supports a humanised approach to supply chain management.

While many consultancy companies incline to concentrate on the environmental issue as far as the environmental, social and governance (ESG) strategies are concerned, KNO Global opts to focus on the social elements when it comes to supply chain management believing that human factors have a strong impact on the flow of goods from sourcing, manufacturing to logistics.

Marianne Hughes from the United Kingdom had a bad shopping experience that she could not buy a jean brand she liked because the factory collapsed in Bangladesh. This had urged the young lady to investigate the cause of the collapse, which revealed that any misunderstanding along the supply chain could lead to disastrous consequences such as factory shutdown, unstable supplies, loss of revenue, etc.

Communication Always Counts

With the aim of bridging the communication gap between factory workers and managers, Hughes set up KNO Global in Hong Kong in 2018 as the Founder and CEO, and Ernest Choi joined as the APAC Head of Operations. The company is determined to build a transparent engagement platform that allows factory workers and managers to express their feelings and opinions via a specific-designed mobile application.

Choosing Hong Kong as the base because Hughes finds it easier to draw team members in the city. For Choi, it is easy to get access to the government departments, the technology ecosystem and all relevant policies.

“Hong Kong is part of China which presents a huge market for us. Secondly, there are many international sourcing offices in Hong Kong, offering lucrative business opportunities for us,” noted Choi.

KNO Global’s mobile application helps build a trusty and do-care community for the workers to talk without barriers. “The main value of our application is to provide a safe way for workers to voice out their feelings and problems, and on the other hand, for the managers to understand their team members’ concerns and address their feedbacks.”

“When the workers engage in the application, they feel being cared and not talking to a robot.” Choi continued.

Technology Always Helps

Leveraging big data analytics, artificial intelligence and machine learning, KNO Global processes and analyses the dialogues to give a full picture of the working environment and problems in the factory. “All dialogues are anonymous sharing. Our aim is to find out solutions and new practices in the workplace for improvements,” Hughes said.

In addition to tracking all possible problems and risks, the application also serves as an education platform that teaches workers about safety issues in a workplace, the way to stay physically and mentally healthy during the COVID-19 pandemic, and how to face grief and loss.

This unique humanised approach is meant for reducing the risk and cost of labour turnover, helping boost productivity and increasing sales and revenue. “And based on our database, buyers can choose the best factories as their production partners,” noted Hughes.

The efforts paid off. In 2021, Hughes won first in the She Loves Tech Competition, which has encouraged more women to set up their businesses in the technology field. The company also won the AHK Innovation Night competition for its scalable, disruptive business idea that addresses a social need.

In the same year, KNO Global successfully became an incubatee of Cyberport’s incubation programme. “I am sure we can gain more exposure and insights by meeting with different people from the technology ecosystem in Hong Kong. We are very much looking forward to the mentorship programme,” Choi enthused.