These stories are written the same way every time — no marketing language, no vague references to "significant improvement." Just what happened, what went wrong, what it took, and what the outcome was. Clients are not named without permission.
This engagement is a career achievement from Francis's 30-year operational tenure. The client is not named. The story is told with the level of detail that a practitioner believes is useful — not a press release.
It began with a cold email. No warm introduction, no existing relationship — just Francis writing to a pharma MNC in Malaysia whose other plant was already running an automated solution and getting measurable results from it. That site had freed up packers, cut out redundant steps, and reclaimed floor space they didn't know they had. He figured the Malaysia site deserved the same conversation.
A few days later, the supervisor replied. He wanted Francis to come in.
The first visit went well. Francis showed them what was possible, and they asked him to step back while they discussed internally. Then silence. A few weeks later, he called. The supervisor was polite but lukewarm — no real interest. Francis nearly moved on.
Two weeks after that, the supervisor called him back. The Operations Director wanted to meet. He went back in, re-presented everything, and this time the brief changed: design a solution that would connect three floors of packing operations into a single end-to-end process. That was a much bigger ask than the original brief.
The original automation lead on Francis's side had already resigned. He was effectively running the project alone, working with an integration partner he had only met a few weeks earlier. They got on a call and started designing.
I didn't have a playbook for this one. No local lead, no guaranteed win, no certainty the budget would ever get there. What I had was persistence, a good integration partner, and enough belief in the solution to keep going.
Francis Lee · Malaysia pharma projectThe budget was never comfortable. Every revision meant going back to the drawing board — not to add features, but to find ways to deliver the same outcome for less. They went through at least five rounds over several months.
Midway through the process, Francis found out a competitor had been brought in to work on something similar. He hadn't been told. That changed the stakes and the urgency.
When he finally presented the full proposal to the Director, she cut 30% off his price on the spot. No negotiation preamble — just a number, and a look that said take it or leave it. Francis went back to his integration partner. They went line by line through the cost structure. It took time, but they found a price that worked for both sides and still made sense for the customer.
The purchase order came in on Christmas Eve. A cold email to a signed order worth over a million US dollars — in one of the shortest timelines Francis has seen for a project of this complexity.
The right-size carton automation solution cut packer numbers significantly, stripped out redundant handling between floors, and freed up floor space the site is already putting to use. This story is published with Francis's personal attribution — the client is not named.
This is a story about how listening to customers — really listening — turned a USD 20,000 annual market into a million-dollar business in under a year.
My career began over 30 years ago with a very specific job — designing packaging cushions to protect customers' products. Six months in, our service engineer left the company, and I was asked to step up and cover his role on top of my own. I was still learning the craft of designing packaging cushions, and now I was also standing in front of customers, face-to-face with their equipment challenges.
Looking back, it was the best thing that could have happened to me.
Having to solve real problems for real customers changed everything. I stopped seeing my role as a technical function and started seeing it as a relationship. Customers began to trust me. Their material orders grew. I discovered I had a passion for business development — for understanding what a customer truly needed and finding a way to deliver it.
Over the years, I expanded my scope across Southeast Asia, then into broader Asia, taking on technical and commercial support roles at the regional level.
If you are not there to listen to your customers, somebody else will be.
Francis Lee · Vietnam market entryWhen the company decided to enter Vietnam, I was nominated as Chief Representative to work with the local distributor. The market was modest — annual sales of just USD 20,000.
I approached it the same way I always had: listen first, understand the customer's real challenges, then bring them genuine value. No hard sell. Just consistent presence, honest conversations, and solutions that worked. As customers began to trust the relationship, their order sizes shifted — from small consignments to full container shipments.
Within 9 months, the Vietnam business crossed USD 1 million — built entirely on customer trust, active listening, and consistent on-the-ground support.
The lesson has never changed: be there for your customers, listen to their concerns, and support them with real value — and they will buy from you. If you are not there to listen, somebody else will be.
Three global integrators. One price. A client who refused to let the solution go — even when the integrator spent six months trying to replace it.
When I was tasked to develop and grow the right-size box closing automated solution across Asia, China was always going to be a defining market. A project came in — a serious one — with three globally recognised systems integrators competing for it. I made a deliberate decision: I proposed the same package to all three. Same solution, same terms, same price. No favourites.
Two months later, one integrator won the contract. Then the negotiation started.
The integrator came back asking for a 40% reduction. Their customer needed a lower price, they said. And faster delivery on top of that. Forty percent — on a first-of-its-kind right-size box closing automated solution in the market.
I had been in this long enough to know when a request like that would stick and when it wouldn't. This one wouldn't. The customer understood what the solution was worth, and I was confident they would not accept a compromise that changed its fundamentals. I held my position.
The integrator didn't accept that answer. They started searching for alternatives — equivalent solutions, different suppliers, anything they could bring to the client as a substitute. That search took six months.
I had been in this long enough to know when a price cut would stick and when it wouldn't. The client knew the value. I just had to wait for everyone else to catch up.
Francis Lee · China luxury goods projectIt is one thing to believe your solution is the right one. It is another thing entirely when a motivated buyer, with real commercial pressure to find a cheaper alternative, spends half a year searching and still cannot replace you.
That is what happened. The client — a globally recognised luxury goods brand — knew what they had evaluated. They knew the quality and the value that came with this specific solution, and they would not move. After six months, the integrator came back. Nine months had now passed since they won the contract. The project was urgent.
We negotiated again. We stood on our proposal.
On New Year's Eve 2023, I was on holiday in Japan when my phone rang. It was the Country Director. The contract had been signed.
Know the value of what you are selling, and hold it. When a customer has already decided your solution is the right one, no amount of commercial pressure will change that — as long as you do not change it for them.
Additional field stories will be added as projects are completed and cleared for publication. Each one will be written the same way: no marketing language, just what happened and what it took.
Before any workshop or engagement, Francis uses a structured readiness assessment to determine where AI can realistically be applied in an operations context — and where it cannot. This is the public version of that tool.
What the checklist covers: