According to the inaugural MSC Malaysia Score+ Programme (Score+), MSC Malaysia companies have very good business management and operation capabilities, while innovation is the weakest link, indicating the need for stronger focus on general creativity and ingenuity. This is often blamed on financial (in)capabilities, as the knowledge of financial support is low. Clearly more has to be done to bridge this gap.

Score+ measures the performance and market value of the rapidly growing MSC Malaysia community of companies. It helps MDeC identify high-performing companies with good revenues, competitive business operations and management, and ability to scale up for future expansion. Essentially, Score+ works as a survey and scorecard for MSC Malaysia companies.

Acting very much like business intelligence survey, Score+ is needed, given the rapidly changing demographics, socio-economic, and technological advances that society is experiencing. By acquiring accurate and timely data on companies, speaking to management and top executives, the programme measures the overall performance of organisations on key processes. In doing so, MDeC has the capability to strategically group companies into certain portfolio types, making it easy for the necessary planning, intelligence colleting, and decision making process for developing, nurturing, and accruing assistance to these companies.

There are no low scores or negative connotations to be derived from the study. As MSC Malaysia moves from a capacity driven to market driven model, it makes sense for Score+ to recommend new focused programmes that can help close gaps these companies are facing.

Score Measurements
There are two parts to Score+: the BaseSCORE - the information gathering aspect of the study, and the SCORE - the benchmarking framework that covers seven fundamental factors considered important in a business.

In the SCORE, there are seven evaluation makers called Petals, which evaluate the areas of Business Performance, Operation Management, Marketing Capabilities, Talent/Human Resources Development, Management Capabilities, Innovation, and Financial Capabilities. These markers are taken into consideration and are analysed to crystallise the strengths and weaknesses of MSC Malaysia companies. Petals are rated on a star system – the higher the star value, the better the performance in the given category.

For the inaugural programme, MDeC worked closely with SME Corporation Malaysia to generate a deeper level of engagement and understanding of the strengths and gaps in the seven pertinent areas for MSC Malaysia companies. Through the study, companies that have taken part in the survey are able to find out the effectiveness of their marketing strategy and fundamental strengths and weaknesses, management capabilities and compare themselves against their competitors.

In finding out these facts, MSC Malaysia companies are then able to learn how to improve their operational management capabilities and overall business performance. They can then focus on these weaknesses and work to improve them as they work to consolidate their strengths and consider value-added services crucial to their operations.

Findings and Ratings
The SCORE survey for 2009 assigned a mean average rating of 2.12 stars out of the maximum 5, to MSC Malaysia companies. While the mean may seem short of a good score, the study also found that there are nine companies that scored the impressive 4 stars and 202 companies have been rated with 3 stars or higher.

These 202 companies and the nine high-flyers are noted to be large contributors to the top three financial indicators: revenue, exports, and research and development (R&D) expenditure.

Clearly, Malaysia can do a whole lot better and judging by what is being done now, it will. Even now a large number of MSC Malaysia companies are in the expansion and development phase and are expected to be in the high performance zone very soon.