Date: 17 July 2012 (Tuesday)
Time: 09:00am – 05:30pm
Venue: Teachers Network (Ministry Of Education), 51, Grange Road, Block 5, #01-01, Singapore 249564
The CFC is a multi-agency effort led by the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (“IDA”), in collaboration with SPRING Singapore (“SPRING”), Ministry of Community Development, Youth and Sports (“MCYS”), Ministry of Education (“MOE”), and NTUC‟s Employment and Employability Institute (“e2i”).
This CFC is also supported by the following government agencies: Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore (“MPA”), Council for Estate Agencies (“CEA”), and Council for Private Education (“CPE”).
Many enterprises are still not fully harnessing infocomm technology to enhance their productivity. Apart from Accounting & Finance software, only 3 in 10 enterprises used at least one other enterprise software in 20101. The barriers to infocomm adoption commonly cited by SMEs and Enterprise Users are: “Technology is too complicated” and “Cost of infocomm expenditure is too high”.
SaaS is an easy-to-adopt, scalable and cost-effective option to many enterprises. Upon subscription, an enterprise can start using it with minimum customisation. The enterprise can also readily access the new functionalities added and extend the application to new users, as its business grows. As the cost of using SaaS is subscription-based, there is no upfront capital outlay; and the recurrent costs become predictable.
SaaS is well-suited to drive mass ICT adoption within a sector. The sector approach enables best practices, compliance requirements, as well as enterprise-to-enterprise interactions to be readily incorporated into the solution and rolled out to the many enterprises on the SaaS platform. Aside from sector wide productivity benefits, this model has the added advantage of enabling increasing participation, and lowering overall costs through the aggregation of demand.
Benefits can also be realised by Enterprise Users who can introduce new and improved business processes by leveraging on common requirements with the scalable and collaborative potential of SaaS. New business models can be created by linking, sharing and combining resources using SaaS in an entire business ecosystem.
Some examples of potential SME target sectors are: Private Education Institutes (PEIs), Pre-Schools, Real Estate Agencies, Security Agencies, Cleaning Companies, Attractions, Shipping Agents and Bunker Traders. Some examples of potential Enterprise User target sectors are: Oil and Gas, Hospitality, Financial Services Institutions and Logistics.
Vendors working with SME sectors and Enterprise Users to co-develop new SaaS will gain access to aggregated demand, critical domain knowledge and/or business processes.
The CFC envisages that ICT Vendors will also be able to leverage the lead demand generated to develop impactful, scalable, and exportable SaaS solutions with sustainable business models.
