Company Profile - History & Background

Hajjah Sabariah Faridah’s interest in early childhood education started when she was

working as a volunteer teacher at an Islamic English kindergarten in Ottawa while she

was a Chemistry student at Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada. Since then, she has

been active in helping entrepreneurs, associations, and communities to open Islamic

kindergartens in Malaysia.

 

With the Grace of Allah, in January 2003, Hajjah Sabariah Faridah and her husband, Haji

Roslan Nordin finally founded their own kindergarten. The name given to the new

kindergarten was Little Caliphs Kindergarten, but due to the naming rules of Ministry of

Education, the name could not be used. Instead, the kindergarten was named Tadika

Rama Rama Bistari.

 

Backed by her many years of active training and consultancy on early childhood

education, the founders used the new kindergarten as a platform to design, develop, and

test a new pre-school program, namely The Little Caliphs Program.

 

Continuous research and development, courses attended, hands-on involvements,

feedback from parents, students, and staff, visits to other kindergarten all over the world,

and most importantly, inspiration from Allah S.W.T. - all of these have contributed to the

development of TLCP.

 

In this husband and wife synergy, Haji Roslan Nordin plays the role as business author of

TLCP while Hajjah Sabariah Faridah as the academic author.

 

The Little Caliphs Program™ was originally marketed by ILM Marketing since 2003. To

mark the founders plan for marketing TLCP into international arena, Little Caliphs

International Sdn Bhd was incorporated on 6th of January 2010.

 

Little Caliphs International Sdn Bhd (885099-A)

Incorporated in Shah Alam, Selangor on 06 January 2010.

Fully owned by the founders of The Little Caliphs Program :

         Haji Roslan bin Nordin and Hajjah Sabariah Faridah Jamaluddin.

Authorized capital: RM100,000.     

Paid-up capital: RM100,000.

Business focus: Focuses on Early Childhood Education and Business

licensing program, academic research, training, consultancy, publishing,

trading and merchandising of pre-school related products.

 

Mission

The Curriculum Mission:

1.     Our mission is to instil the LOVE of Islam and knowledge to young children

2.     To give young learners a wonderful and effective learning experiences using best

        Practices in early childhood education.

 

 The Business Mission:

To provide aspiring entrepreneurs with a credible investment and business opportunity in

Islamic-English-Creative pre-school education service provision.

 

Vision

The Little Caliphs Program™ becomes the world most preferred kindergarten program.

Individual Profile

Name : Haji Roslan Bin Nordin

Age : 22 Disember 1964

City : Section 7 Shah Alam

Profession (current) : CEO and Founder

Years in Occupation (current) : 10 years

Education Background:

         M. Sc. in Computer Sc., CMU, MI, USA (1988)

         B. Sc. in Computer Sc., WMU, MI, USA (1986)

         King George V Secondary School, Seremban (1977-1982).

Career Background :

Chief Executive Officer, Little Caliphs International Sdn Bhd.

 

   A keen learner of Islam, a father of five children

   An information technology and management professional, a business coach and

consultant, an educationist, and a seasoned entrepreneur.

   Former positions: President of an IT firm, General Manager IT & Billing at

Telekom Malaysia International BD, Dean of Information Technology Faculty at

Universiti Industri Selangor, Corporate Strategy Manager at NISSAN Saudi

Arabia, Lecturer at University Teknologi MARA.

Public trainer and consultant on Kinderpreneurship, Project Management,

Balanced Scorecard, and Inner Skills of Wealth Creation.

   Developed Little Caliphs Kinderpreneurship Program

   Serving Little Caliphs on part-time basis since 2003, and on full-time basis since

2009.

Who inspired him? : His Wife, Hajah Sabariah Faridah Binti Jamaluddin. She’s the

one who are inspired him to establish Kindergarten which are known as The Little

Caliphs (TLC) major focus in education, management, branding

What is the changes?

1) The changes and why do the organizations need for the change

Which images of change did you come across?

Profession (personal)

Before involve in education business field, he has worked in several different

industry. He has held the position as President of an IT firm, General Manager IT &

Billing at Telekom Malaysia International BD, Dean of Information Technology Faculty

at Universiti Industri Selangor, Corporate Strategy Manager at NISSAN Saudi Arabia,

and Lecturer at University Teknologi MARA.

From his previous past experience in various fields, he’s got the idea to establish

Little Caliphs kindergarten. His personal mission is to expose and give input to children

about Allah the creator of everything.

Once he started the business, he started his business at home. He conducted the

business with his wife. He promoted his business amongst their friends. At that time, he

only has 12 kids as his students and that is the first batch of their students. He trained the

kids, expose them to spiritual, cognitive, socio-emotional and physical. The technique or

the syllabus of the lesson could be applied in primary and secondary school. Prior to this

business, he started with zero. He has no marketing, knowledge about the business and no

management. Armed with his existing strategies, he managed to educate the children

effectively. And their business started to growth with the words of mouth.

Management

Change management

Once Haji Roslan had established The Little Caliph (TLC), of course the management

of the organization will change. The changes are, he managed to lease a bigger building

to expand his business because the number of TLC students is increasing day by day.

Besides that, the uses of man power are also increasing as the business is growing up.

The location of TLC also must be strategic and convenient for people to find this

kindergarten. The systems also change to make operation fast and efficient. Example of

the change in system is account system. Before this, they had to deal with customer in

manual way, but now they can issue invoices, and make payment via online.

Business Management

Hajah Sabariah uses her skills and her expertise in managing the business to expand

their brand and make other people realize about TLC existence. Besides that, Hajah

Sabariah also uses her skill to solve the conflict or problems that occur in their

organization. For instance, workers problem, parents complaint and other. To solve this

problem, Hajah Sabariah uses the Islamic approach, means maintaining the relationship

with Allah. At the same time, build a good relationship between the internal and external

in the organization.

At the beginning of their business, they are facing some internal conflict such lack of

resources, lack of skill among staff and others. The effect from this problem, they have to

do multitasking task and they having difficulties to get the supplies of books. On 6 th

January 2010, their brand began to be at a comfortable level. So, they can overcome the

problem and manage to improve their system become more effective.

Throughout their involvement in The Little Caliph, they successfully established a

total of 130 preschool that use the same brand starting from 2010 until 2012. In 2010,

they had established 30 of The Little Caliph. In 2011, they had more than 50 of The Little

Caliph. And the following year, The Little Caliph has 90 of The Little Caliph preschool.

Tuan Haji Roslan and his wife intend to establish the Little Caliph based on several

factors. The first factor is technology. Without change, the operation organization will

not effective because all the activities in organization is done in manual and the process

will become slow and at the same lots of work will overlap. Change that results from the

adoption of new technology is common in most organization and while it can be

disruptive at first, ultimately the change tends to increase productivity and service.

Technology also has affected how we communicate. No longer do business people dial a

rotary phone, get a busy signal and try again and again until they get through. No longer

do business people difficult to contact people, in person, to find out about other people

who might be useful resources. They can search for experts online through search

engines as well as through social media sites. Today's communication technology

growing represents changes that allow organizations to learn more, more quickly, than

ever before. Before Little Caliph implements the advance technology, the management

unable to paid their staff wages on time. The obvious good impact from changes of the

technology is the management is now can paid the wages on time to the staff because

they has been provide a good system especially for wages payment in organization.

The second factor of organization needs change is economy. The economy can

impact organizations in both positive and negative ways and both can be stressful. A

strong economy and increasing demand for products and services will mean that

companies must consider expansion that might involve the addition of staff and new

facilities. These changes offer opportunities for staff, but also represent new challenges.

A weak economy can create even more problems as companies find themselves needing

to make difficult decisions that can impact employees' salaries and benefits and even

threaten their jobs. The ability to manage both ends of the situation are critical for

organizations that want to maintain a strong brand and strong relationships with

customers as well as employees. At the beginning of the Little Caliph opening on 2003,

Tuan Haji Roslan and his wife are sudden facing financial problem that give big impact

on their life. Some of the serious problem is Tuan Haji and his wife has to take a leave

without salary because they can’t afford to hire a staff and paid their salary. Furthermore,

at that time they only have 12 students and cause they are difficult to compete with the

other preschool.

The last factor organization need changes are growth opportunities. Change is

important in organizations to allow employees to learn new skills, explore new

opportunities and exercise their creativity in ways that ultimately benefit the organization

through new ideas and increased commitment. Preparing employees to deal with these

changes involves an analysis of the tools and training required to help them learn new

skills. Training can be provided through traditional classroom settings or, increasingly,

through online learning opportunities. Importantly, organizations need to do a good job of

evaluating employees' capabilities and then taking steps to fill the gaps between current

skills and the skills required to respond to growth. The growth opportunities that we can

relate Tuan Haji Roslan are, before he involves himself in this preschool business, he

does not have any experience and knowledge to manage this business. With the talent

that his wife had, he has joint his wife business and develops The Little Caliphs to be

more advanced. He also want The Little Caliphs be a same level and compete with the

others existence preschool.

Any business in today's fast-moving environment that is looking for the pace of

change to slow is likely to be sorely disappointed. In fact, businesses should embrace

change. Change is important for any organization because, without change, businesses

would likely lose their competitive edge and fail to meet the needs of what most hope to

be a growing base of loyal customers.

2) Any barriers in managing changes?

Every organization could not avoid from conflict. TLC also facing several of

conflict in order to established it. Once he established his first kindergarten, his facing a

sudden drop in income. He used all of his savings to set up his first kindergarten. He

sacrifices his job just to help his wife. His wife willing to take a long leave without salary

just too focuses on their business. He did not want to see his wife worked alone. Before

he had his own building, he making his business at their house. He makes an enlargement

at his house to accommodate their students. He received his first batch of 12 students. He

developed and adapts his new techniques to their students. And he succeeds.

Before both of them involve in franchise business, they just opened the ordinary

preschool like other preschool in Malaysia. But their preschool is emphasis on Islamic

education. Haji Roslan and his wife, intend to expand their businesses throughout

Malaysia. Therefore, they opened a franchise-based business that offered anyone who is

interested in preschool education to opened their own kindergarten, but under the TLC

name. This franchisee must follow the procedure that has been set by TLC in order to

establish the preschool. So the conclusion that we can conclude is, the franchisee must

have a strong religious background before opened up the preschool and strongly

motivated to contribute to the early childhood education for the young generation.

To achieve this mission, they have to strengthen the management side before they

want to succeed in their business. First, they have the budget to hired fresh graduate. The

reason why they hired fresh graduate is they can provide new ideas to their business and

giving them new alternatives in order to enhance the business. Although this fresh

graduates wont long-lasting to work for them, it is worth it to have them for the short

term. But again, it incurred a lot of cost to turn over the staff.

At the beginning The Little Caliphs operation, they need to increase the number

of their staff. Because at that time their workers among fresh graduate and they do not

have a permanent workers. Once they have the permanent worker, they can reduce the

cost of turnover staff and build the good image and maintain their reputation. With the

addition of staff, they able to applied functional organization chart that will delegate the

duties among the workers to avoid multitasking. After they develop organizational chart,

this are the some of the department that involve SALAM, FAHRIM, CARTA. This

specialization is useful because it can support the system in organization and make the

system more effective.

3) The ways organization to sustain the change management

In a rapidly changing world, business leaders are finding it difficult to keep their

competitive advantage on continuous. Technology and cost control are no longer

adequate to sustain the lead. It is the organization ability to innovate through creative

thinking that makes all the differences. Organization recognizes the importance of

creativity and innovation for acquiring and sustaining success.

In order to sustain the change, the CEO of The Little Caliph (TLC) tries to expand the

kindergarten that will be recognized by customer worldwide. This program offered a

standard curriculum for Islamic-English-Creative pre-school program all over the world.

The program that Little Caliph offered not only used by locally, but it also can be used

accordance to overseas education system. With this way, it is easier for Little Caliph to

penetrate their brand at abroad. Besides that, once Little Caliph has entered abroad, they

must always follow the passage of time. They have to change the mentality of people

abroad and to incorporate knowledge about Islam.

The Little Caliph uses the feedback and the testimony from the internal and external

side of view. Through the feedback and testimony, Little Caliph uses the information

received as a guideline to improve and identify their weaknesses. Furthermore, through

the feedback and testimony, The Little Caliph may know their strength and will always

try to maintain and improve overall quality and becoming more effective.

The Little Caliph also held a free seminar every weekend for those who are interested

to involve in this field. And their target people for this seminar are fresh graduate, parents

and entrepreneur. This is one of the ways they promote their brand to people and issue a

license to anyone who is interested in opening The Little Caliph.

The last way Little Caliph used to sustain their organization is used the teamwork

approach. Teamwork is an important aspect that should be provided by both employers

and employees. Teamwork is the ability to work together toward a common vision. The

ability to direct individual accomplishment toward organizational objectives. The

importance of working in a team is many. It involves the joint efforts of a number of

people to achieve a common goal. Therefore every organization should emphasize on the

importance of teamwork for the overall growth of the company.

4) Give situation to interviewee ( lets say there has any conflicts in organization,

what they will do) (based on their profession)

Different type of customer (mentality)

staff fighting- depends on how we treat them, never scold them. Must have a good

relationship with Allah. Istighfar

must build good relationship- trust

especially stakeholders consists of supplier, sfaff, shareholder, distribution