Meet Our Chapter Chairs (Part 1)

Meet Our Chapter Chairs (Part 1): Cyber Security, Digital Transformation and Singapore Enterprise

We start 2021 by interviewing the chairperson of three of SGTech’s Chapters, namely Mr Dutch Ng (Chair, Cyber Security Chapter), Mr Mark Shmulevich (Chair, Digital Transformation Chapter) and Ms Sharon Teo (Chair, Singapore Enterprise Chapter).

Please tell us about yourself.

Dutch Ng: My career in the IT industry has spanned more than 25 years. I started out working in Citibank Regional Asia Pacific Technology Group and am now Co-founder and CEO of i-Sprint Innovation, an Identity and Access Management solution provider.

I have been in the Cyber Security Chapter (CSC) for several years, starting from when SGTech was SiTF. We have advocated continuously two key areas – driving cybersecurity awareness and growing the pipeline of talent. While the government is focused on the critical infrastructure, and large enterprises have the budgets to enhance their policy and cybersecurity departments to take care of themselves, there are no clear guidelines for SMEs to protect themselves. This is an area where our Chapter can help.

Mark Shmulevich: I have been in the tech industry for over 15 years, working across both large companies and in more entrepreneurial environments, as well as in policymaking in IT and innovation. Currently, I am Senior Vice President of software company Taiger. I believe my experience has allowed me to understand the issues companies usually face when onboarding digital transformation and how they can be mitigated.

Digital Transformation Chapter (DXC) Exco in my view functions like a support body for our members. We understand the challenges they have as solution providers or as consumers. We believe we can help them plan their strategies, find partners and learn the best practices.

Sharon Teo: I am the co-founder of Inspire-Tech, and this is my final year leading the Singapore Enterprise Chapter (SEC). Over the last two years, we have emphasised our three pillars of Strengthen, Collaborate, and Internationalise in our plans and activities, and will continue to do so. Many of our activities focus on strengthening and helping our SME members.

What are the goals for the chapter in this coming year?

Dutch Ng: On growing talent, we intend to reach out to every educational institution offering courses in cybersecurity. We will collaborate with cybersecurity associations to share more about the industry. We aim to inspire young talent into understanding 'why' they should join the cybersecurity profession and industry.

We also find good cybersecurity solutions that are not among the approved products under the SME Go Digital programme. The Chapter wants to engage IMDA to include those solutions
so SMEs can benefit from receiving grant support for their use.

Mark Shmulevich: We have three goals. Firstly, to create partnerships and build consortia. We can be a platform for companies to congregate, find one another and start building and launching projects together.

Secondly, we want to help the companies that have not invested much in digital transformation to understand exactly how digital they are and how technology can help them and learn how to start. We know it’s difficult for them to make the first move.

Thirdly, we want to be a source of information where members can access successful use cases in digital transformation. Besides learning sessions devoted to particular industries or technologies, we want to build this repository of knowledge of the best practices inside the Digital Transformation Chapter.

Sharon Teo: The SEC Exco has formed a task force to create a consortium for interested member companies to go overseas and bid for projects. If we can get the consortium started in 2021, it will boost our collaboration pillar.

For this year, we want to help our members with their HR and talent by working closely and collaborating with SGTech's other committees and chapters.

One of our goals has been to create a bridge between SGTech's talent committee and our Chapter, to get access to talent that is made available from the committee’s programmes. The talent committee can collaborate with IMDA and the TechSkills Accelerator (TESA) programme to find ways to drive talent to SMEs.

We also want to look at broader collaboration and support areas, such as bringing IMDA’s Global Ready Talent (GRT) programme closer to our members and encouraging more SMEs to take up the mentorship-related initiatives.

What activities has the chapter planned in the next few months?

Dutch Ng: The CSC kicks off the year (on 13 January) with a joint webinar with Singapore Food Manufacturers' Association, focussing on identity management for products, which is vital for food safety. Singapore companies exporting food products would want to enable their customers to identify the genuine and authentic version of their products.

We will talk about cyber preparedness in an upcoming session co-hosted with the Singapore Business Federation in February. Having proper consideration for cybersecurity will help add muscle to SGTech member companies when they pitch their solutions to customers.

Back to helping SMEs with their cybersecurity needs, the Chapter has just concluded a research study to understand the low adoption of cybersecurity solutions among SMEs. With the findings of the study, we want to collaborate with the Cyber Security Agency (CSA) to develop cybersecurity toolkits applicable to SMEs of various profiles, to make it easy for them to be cyber-safe.

Mark Shmulevich: There are several types of DXC members that we are focusing our plans on. The first is smaller enterprises who are solution providers for digital transformation. Soon this year, we will create a convenient channel for them to interact with one another, exchanging knowledge and building partnerships. We will also continue direct interaction between our ExCo and chapter members to make sure everyone is heard.

Another is companies of various sizes, looking for the best product and market fit between what they can offer and what digital transformation requires. We will guide them with knowledge sharing sessions. The first ones will look at how SMEs can transform digitally. It will focus on successful cases of such transformation, both from Singapore and internationally. We also plan to arrange a session devoted to modern digital marketing technologies in the next months. COVID has accelerated the demand for such knowledge.

Finally, there are companies who want to transform and are exploring where or how to start. For each organisation, we recommend they find a resource — this can be a single person or even a department — who has the knowledge and experience to make their digital transformation journey smoother. DXC will support them in it. Later in 2021, we also plan to introduce a Digital Check-Up tool to help the companies identify the gaps and advantages that can influence their digitalisation plans.

Sharon Teo: In 2020, a successful initiative was developing a Solutions Toolbox for SMEs during the Circuit Breaker period. The Toolbox has been well-received by the user community and gave the member companies a platform to showcase their solutions to the broader business community.

This year, the SEC will continue to foster collaboration among SMEs and the larger companies, for example, through talks in areas such as marketing and digitalisation. We are also planning more webinars, with a focus on helping SMEs digitally transform. As resources are always an issue for our SMEs and start-up members, we can connect them with larger players to help with their code development.

We also plan to set up a LinkedIn group for the Chapter. We already have a WhatsApp chat group that has since evolved into a vibrant and active community sharing problems, insights, advice and information. We want to move this to LinkedIn to interact further, for example, run short polls with members.

Look out for Part 2

We hope that this has given you a glimpse of the goals and upcoming activities for these chapters. Look out for our next feature, where we interview the chairperson for SGTech’s AI & High Performance Computing, Cloud & Data and Smart Nation Chapters.

If you wish to find out more about any of our Chapters, or to join any SGTech Chapter or Committee, contact us at membership@sgtech.org.sg.