Malaysia is strategically situated with easy accessibility to other countries and has a robust infrastructure and economic stability. ICT has been identified as the key growth sector in the country that grows at an Annual Average Growth Rate (AAGR) of 9.0% over a period of 7 years. The ICT sector is one of the most productive in Malaysia, and besides boosting digital transformation, it is contributing about 13.8% to the total GDP.

Malaysia has always been a popular destination for U.S. ICT companies for their global market expansion. Some of the significant U.S. companies that are well-established in Malaysia are IBM, HP, Intel, Google, Amazon, and many others. Malaysia has a holistic digital ecosystem and a complete ICT support system for U.S. businesses.

At the same time, according to Markus Monnikendam from Lizard Global, a leading IT company from Malaysia, we can say that following a stronger-than-expected rebound of 7.8 percent last year, the Central Bank of Malaysia projects economic growth of between 4% and 5% in 2023, which will help Malaysia avoid a recession. The recovery is widespread across industries and businesses. Since the reopening of international borders, recovery has become more established. Businesses of all sizes and in all industries saw an increase in sales as compared to the same period before the pandemic. But when it comes to sales growth, big businesses continue to dominate.

Why You Should Work With Malaysian IT Companies

Malaysia is a great outsourcing opportunity for foreign companies, but it hosts numerous tech giants, which have educated the local digital community to implement those needed changes in business culture, project management, and prepared the skilled workforce in the IT industry. 

For this reason, companies from Malaysia are more visible and considered a regional force in the IT industry, making good competition for Indonesia, the Philippines, and even India.

In addition to this, Markus Monnikendam, the Commercial Director Global of Lizard Global, mentions that in the upcoming years, Malaysia's growth will be centered on technology. Malaysia's much-awaited adoption of 5G technology is anticipated to have a substantial positive impact on the labor market because it will enhance the development of the web and generate an estimated 39,000 value-added jobs. 

Why Outsource Software Development to Malaysia?

Malaysia is an attractive outsourcing destination known for offshoring services in software development and BPO. It has a rapidly growing tech industry with thriving tech hubs, boasting a vibrant startup ecosystem, innovation centers, and accelerators. Various factors make Malaysia more appealing as an outsourcing location, including supportive government policies, the presence of tech cities, and high-quality education. Additionally, talented tech experts, high English proficiency, cost-effectiveness, and ease of doing business in Malaysia raise Malaysia’s position as a perfect destination for software development outsourcing. 

What to Pay Attention to When Working With Malaysian IT Companies

Since it is expected that Malaysia will reach a digitalization level of 21% by 2025, local IT companies are struggling to invest in the training and education of young developers and designers that would bring potential growth to the Malaysian IT sector. However, following the current trends, Malaysian IT companies have a high chance of growing and providing higher-quality digital services. 

Also, the layoffs in the IT industry. Markus Monnikendam from Lizard Global states that recent layoffs at IT firms show that even the biggest businesses can make misjudgments when attempting to strike a balance between staff planning and profitability.

How Reliable Are Malaysian IT Companies

On a regional background known for outsourcing destinations for international IT companies, Malaysian web and software agencies have a continuously improving position in terms of reliability. Both local demands for digital products and international opportunities gave Malaysian IT companies enough chances to reveal their potential and increase the trust level of clients. 

How Does the Malaysian IT Industry Relate to the Neighboring Countries?

The tech evolution in the past 5 years has managed to create a competitive environment in the region, where each step towards evolution is considered an advantage. The Malaysian IT industry relies heavily on tech giants' investments that would to manage, keep, and educate young professionals. Nonetheless, the recent tax-friendly policies implemented by the Malaysian government managed to develop the IT industry and infrastructure, but it is still behind Indonesia and India.

How is the Business Climate for Opening a New IT Company as a Local Entrepreneur in Malaysia?

According to Ezra Tan from VeecoTech Web & Ecommerce Sdn Bhd, a local IT company from Malaysia, the demand is higher than the supply. However, IT talent is minimal, and companies are competing aggressively to recruit talent, which is one of the main struggles for new IT companies that have to compete with bigger market players. This means that when opening an IT company in Malaysia, the entrepreneur should first look for skilled professionals due to high competitiveness, and only later be concerned about incoming projects. 

Moreover, Markus Monnikendam states that Malaysia, a developing nation, has been attempting to diversify its economy to reduce its reliance on natural resources and move towards a more knowledge-based economy. Kuala Lumpur (KL) is ranked as the third best startup ecosystem in Southeast Asia, behind Singapore and Jakarta, in Startup Genome's 2020 Global Startup Ecosystem Report. With startups in numerous industries, Malaysia has a broad startup environment. However, e-commerce, fintech, and healthcare are the most promising industries.

How do Governmental Institutions Encourage the Development of the IT Sector?

Erza Tan also states that there are multiple grants that are being rolled out to encourage businesses to be more innovative and to assist small businesses to digitalize their businesses with special tax rebates as well. Some of these grants can be found at MDEC, or get more information about them on HSBC.

Also, according to the Commercial Director Global of Lizard Global, Markus Monnikendam, the Malaysian government created the MyDIGITAL program as part of the Malaysia Economy Digital Economy Blueprint to promote this broad-based ambition, embracing a national digital transformation. The government has goals to make Malaysia a high-income, digitally-driven nation and a regional leader in the digital economy by 2030, and this program is a part of those plans. Malaysia aims to strengthen its position as a regional data hub through the government's Cloud First plan under the MyDIGITAL framework, embracing investment in data centers.

Industry 4.0 represents a shift in the global economy of Malaysia, driven by technologies like AI, IoT, robotics, and big data analytics. It helps improve efficiency and competitiveness and is adopted by different countries, including Germany, the US, and China. Malaysia is leveraging Industry 4.0 to optimize its manufacturing industry, attract foreign investments, and foster tech innovations. 

Kuala Lumpur & Penang - the Best Cities for IT Businesses, Locals Say

When asked about the best two places for IT businesses in Malaysia, Erza mentioned that Kuala Lumpur would be the best city for IT companies, as it has the best balance of having a bigger pool of talent and a bigger opportunity to do business with a wide range of local and MNC companies there. The next location would be Penang. A growing hub and one of the biggest contributors to the country's revenue.

But the list goes on, as Markus Monnikendam from Lizard Global places in the lists two other locations at the top of doing IT business in Malaysia: Cyberjaya and Iskandar Puteri.

• Cyberjaya -  With 144,000 innovators and creators, 400 MSC-status organizations, including multinational corporations (MNCs), and more than 40 government offices and centers, the city is currently regarded as Malaysia's technological hub. It essentially acts as the foundation for successful technology companies and businesses.
• Iskandar Puteri - It is now a center for cutting-edge digital innovations. Iskandar NEXT, one of its initiatives, aims to create and deploy Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) technological ecosystems. The Blockchain Village at Medini (BVAM) and the Drone and Robotics Zone (DRZ) Iskandar, Malaysia's first drone and robotics hub, were both made possible as a result.

Is the Malaysian Talent Poll IT-driven?

The short answer - yes. The long answer, however, has a more detailed explanation. According to Lizard Global, when local talents move employers in 2023, local talent anticipates earning an increase of 20% to 30% in pay. Less than 20% salary increases will probably make it difficult for businesses to recruit top employees. Other financial perks, such as fuel or transportation allowances, food subsidies, and flexible yearly leave, are particularly effective for attracting talent while improving the entire employee experience. However, if there is one perk that we are aware of that employees value most, it is flexible scheduling. 

This article was created together with prominent figures and professionals coming from reputable Malaysian IT Companies. Special credits: Erza Tan and Markus Monnikendam.

SEO (search engine optimization) is the process of optimizing your website in order to get a higher ranking in organic search results and consequently more organic traffic.

SEO is a long term strategy and requires advanced knowledge of ranking algorithms and some technical background, to be able to optimize websites for popular search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo, etc.

According to the latest survey on digital marketing conducted by TechBehemoths, about 70% of IT companies revealed that SEO is their main channel for leads, meaning that it’s a vital marketing activity that generates traffic, prospects and sales.

Some of the benefits of SEO are:

• Free organic traffic
• Brand awareness 
• Better control over brand traffic
• A vital marketing channel for leads & sales
• Supports other channels: social media, paid ads, direct traffic, etc.
• Optimizes your advertising budget
• Usually, has a higher conversion rate
• Gives you a competitive advantage
• Is a good long term investment, generating decent results

It’s not easy to find a reputable SEO company, as some SEO agencies used to provide questionable/suspicious services in the past, and lots of businesses became reluctant to pay for search engine optimization services.

When looking for and choosing an SEO service provider, you should consider a lot of aspects. Ideally, you should do some basic research, set up clear goals and ask yourself a few questions before hiring a company.

Here are some things to look for when searching for SEO agencies to partner with:

• Expertise
• Portfolio
• Years in business
• Case studies
• Price (expect to pay at least $30 / hour if you’re hiring an agency)
• Approach and particularities (technical SEO, link building, content optimization, etc.)
• Communication and reporting

TechBehemoths lists more than 30,400 SEO companies from all over the world. Check out their profiles and feel free to get in touch with them.

To ease the selection process, we’ve created a powerful filter which you can use to narrow down the results based on your requirements and shortlist the companies.

SEO and search in the AI era

SEO has dramatically changed since the launch of chatbots like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, etc. (post end of 2022), and disrupted the whole search industry for both business owners/publishers and users who search on the web.

User interaction has completely changed, with more users opting for natural language questions instead of search keywords.

While the traditional 10 blue links in Google or Bing are not gone, their importance has shifted , as traditional search engines now integrate summarized answers via AI (Eg. Google AI Overviews, Bing Copilot Search).

Traditional search engines are shifting to chatbot-like interfaces, where users discuss with AI and get relevant and customized answers, just like in ChatGPT or Claude.

This is good and bad news for both business owners and users.

On the positive side, AI chatbots offer endless possibilities for content creation, automation, customization, app/software development, etc. and the entry point is really low. But there are downsides too:

There have been many concerns that AI systems are using copyrighted content to train themselves and generate answers without giving credit or sending referral traffic to the original content creators.

Users can experience AI hallucinations (made up, false information), no real-time data, bias and might diminish critical thinking and evaluation of multiple sources to create an opinion or an action.

SEO is still the foundation

Being present and visible in both search engines and chatbots is critical these days. SEO is the foundation for that, as chatbots operate in a similar way: they use their large language models (LLMs) to answer questions and 3rd party sources (Bing index, web APIs, etc.) to provide real time or recent info and citations/sources within the answers.

If your website is present in Google or Bing index and ranks well in their organic search results, it’s most likely that it will be often cited in chatbots (although it’s not directly correlated).

This is why a new type of SEO has emerged: AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) or GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) which is basically SEO for AI.

To make sure that your website ranks well and is present in traditional search index and AI based search engines, you still need to have a good technical SEO foundation. Here are some fundamental aspects that you need to consider:

• Robots.txt - should be properly configured so that search engines can access your website

• Crawlability - make sure you have a sitemap and meta robots tags on pages that you want or don’t want to appear in search results

• Duplicate content - implement canonical tags, so that search engines know what are the primary/preferred pages to be indexed and ranked/cited.

• Site speed - is essential for users and search engines. Your web pages should load fast on all kinds of devices.

• Mobile first - smartphones are the primary devices for most users, so having a mobile-first website is highly recommended. For more advanced sites with high traffic volumes: PWA and mobile apps could work too.  

• Schema markup - chatbots and search engines rely on structured data to better understand your pages and the type of content you are serving to users. Common schema types can be: local business, event, product, review, rating, etc.

There are other parts of SEO that should be also considered like content creation and backlink/citation building.

Content creation is a significant part of SEO and many companies choose to either outsource or automate the process by using AI tools. It’s important to note that search engines don’t penalize content created by AI, however the quality of content is vital and often content created at scale with AI, doesn’t present much value.

This is why SEO agencies can have a smart/modern approach where they use humans/professionals and AI to help them create valuable content, not just generate content that has no value.

Before you hire an SEO agency it’s important to ask and know exactly how they use AI and what’s their workflow.

Some agencies offer link building/citation building services. Our advice is to avoid bulk/automated link submission services and opt for customized and high quality link building services. Focus on quality rather than quantity.

Managing technical SEO can be overwhelming, hence you can opt for reliable SEO agencies that can make sure your website is up and ranking in search engines, while you can focus on achieving the desired business results.

How to shortlist SEO agencies for your projects?

Finding the right SEO agency for your projects might be a difficult task. That’s why, TechBehemoths offers a few tools to facilitate this process:

Search

Simply search for SEO related services and include the desired location (city or country) and browse the listings. Look at companies with awards, positive reviews, great/excellent profile strength and strong portfolios. 

Feel free to get in touch with the right companies directly from listings.

Advanced filter

Use the advanced filter to narrow down your search results by lots of handy criteria like: location, technologies and tools, team size, hourly rate, review count and rating, and many more. 

You can also sort the filtered results to get a more organized view of your shortlisted companies.

There is an option to save your filter results and choose to receive notifications if new companies meet your filter criteria.

Submit project

Head over to Submit project techbehemoths.com/project-submission and include your project description and specifications, and our system will match it with the best possible tech service providers. You will get a list of curated companies ready to execute your projects.