SINGAPORE — As it moved to bring its instant coffee, chilli paste and kaya into the Chinese market, Nanyang Old Coffee ran into a roadblock — consumers who needed more assurance that they were not buying a counterfeit product.

The company turned to technology to plug this gap: Last December, it rolled out QR code technology on its coffee and food products so that customers can easily check if they had a genuine product on their hands.

Said managing director Lim Eng Lam: “We had a security label verifying the authenticity of the product, but I thought it was not enough, anyone could fake a label. But with QR codes, it would not be so easy.”

When a customer scans the QR code on the product, he is directed to a website that then verifies whether the product was genuine or not.

Once scanned, the QR code becomes void.

And with this solution, created by cloud-tagging solutions provider veriTAG, data can be collected on where its customers are located, which veriTAG can then analyse and share with Nanyang Old Coffee to improve its operations.

Said Mr Lim: “Consumers (in China) are very cautious ... because there are too many imitation products in China.

“The data collected is also very useful for our planning, because if we see that there are more people scanning the codes in a particular area in China, then we may want to move more stocks over there, or plan more marketing activities.”

He welcomed the Government’s efforts to help SMEs go digital as much-needed, noting that many SMEs are not tech savvy, and do not even know what solutions are available.

“We’re not sure of the technology out there that we can tap on. If today, we want to create a cloud-based system, the cost, maintenance and expertise to operate it are also issues.”

If many SMEs face the same issues or needs, the Government can come in to coordinate and create a common platform for SMEs, so that SMEs need not start from scratch, and there are also economies of scale, he added.