By Mohammad Suyanto
Many strategies are used to excel in competition. When first opening Primagama education institution, we got 2 students only, so we tried to find strategies on how to get a lot of students. Primagama strategy, as we call it a unique touch strategy, is to invite senior high school students by using free, integrated trial test on social knowledge and science. This strategy is carried out because the students who want to continue their studies at state universities should sit for such tests. Primagama is the education institution that first held the try-out considered as the guidance of an entrance-test of state universities. As such try-out was done for the first time, there were a large number of participants who sat for it. Before the try-out began, we let the participants know particularly about one of the benefits of Primagama compared with the other educational institutions. Because of the guidance, there were 62 students who took part in Primagama test guidance . The next strategy is an insurance-of -being accepted program, which means that if the students are not accepted at state universities, they needn’t pay tuition fee apart from registration fee, that is, Rp10,000. Such an idea derived from Mr. Purdi, and it was realized by providing the participants with customer services in two offices. One office was located at 7 Jl. Kapten Tendean, and the services were handled Mr. Purdi, and the other was situated at 92 Jl. Demangan Kidul, and the services were handled by Mr. M. Suyanto. The customer services should be handled by the persons who know all the ins and outs of the institution including practical formulas to answer the test items, and the prediction of the test items that come out in the integrated entrance test of the state universities where the participants will continue their studies. We could not imagine how many students of Primagama would have been if the participants who had joined Primagama, and who had been accepted at state universities and announced through newspapers had been enormous.
When I founded the Center for Computer Education and Management IMKI, the unique touch strategy that I applied was the One-year Professional Program, which was equipped with Computer Education, Practical Management Education and Entrepreneurship. When IMKI was founded, there were no computer-education institutions that carried out one-year computer education. Then, the prospective participants of the programs were informed that if they just took the 1- or 3-month computer program, they would only get a little of the knowledge and skill, but if they took the 1-year computer program, they would get much more of the knowledge and skill”. This strategy proved effective.
When STMIK Amikom Yogyakarta was founded , a unique touch strategy wasalso applied. The weakness that I found was that of mental attitude. Therefore, the education at STMIK Amikom began with the mental attitude known as Super Excellent Training. The training model incorporates Super Camp by Bobby De Potter, Achievement Motivation Training, and Spiritual / Emotional Training intelligence. To maintain this mental attitude, when students attend the lecture, they are required to wear a tie, and eventually the habit of wearing a tie leads to the term “The University for Prospective White Collar Workers”. Then, that the facilities applied in process of education of knowledge and skills are high level ones leads to the term “Excellence in Information Technology Trend”. In addition, the concentrations that are offered cover Television Advertising, E-Commerce, and Cartoon Films. In fact, when you understand what unique touch strategy is, it proves to be differentiation strategy or positioning strategy.