Quelle: CIO, USA
"The Gateway to Asia" is how the marketing brochures promoteSingapore. But Brian Chen, CTO of the Infocomm Development Authority(IDA), the government's own IT shop, offers a more practicaldescription: "Singapore is Asia 101," he says.
Or Asia Lite. Or Asia for Beginners. As opposed to countries such asChina and India, where large labor forces are at least partiallycompromised by creaky IT infrastructures or cranky governments,Singapore is the plug-and-play marketplace--a super-wired countrywhere, as the Singaporeans would have Westerners believe, thee-business is brisk and the living is easy.
"This is the place you go to get your feet wet in Asia," says Chen,who was born in Fujian Province in China, was educated as an engineerin the United States, and worked for Motorola in China just prior tojoining the IDA in early 2000. And as Chen sits in IDA's spacious,elegant lounge in the Suntec City Tower Three in Singapore's Marinadistrict (where pop rocker Christopher Cross had performed two daysbefore), Singapore certainly seems to offer Westerners a home awayfrom home. "It's an easy adjustment," Chen concludes.
Singapore has attracted Western interests since 1819, when Sir ThomasStamford Raffles of the British East India Co. stumbled upon the tinyisland (246 square miles) and quickly established it as a trading postfor the British Empire. With its central location (a short swim southfrom Malaysia) and its deep harbor, Singapore by 1869 had become athriving port for Western coal merchants, ship builders andtraders.
Fast-forward to the 1990s. Not only had the port become thebiggest, busiest, most IT-savvy in the world, but thecity-state was now home to thousands of multinationalcompanies, including Citibank, Microsoft and SunMicrosystems--the East India Companies of the late 20thcentury, looking to take advantage of the following:
"For a U.S. company coming into this marketplace, Singapore is verycosmopolitan, a melting pot of cultures," says Vincent Sim, seniormarketing manager for Microsoft's MSN business unit, which opened itsInternet portal to Singapore in 2000. In two years, MSN was able toattract 800,000 local e-mail subscribers, and in 2001 it usedSingapore as a laboratory to launch a successful series of liveconcert webcasts. "We find we can test new services in Singapore andthen cross-share the learnings across Asia," Sim says.
Of course, along with Singapore's business opportunities come a uniqueset of challenges, including the following:
But despite those problems,Singapore today is host to about 6,000 multinational companies, allseeking the seemingly unlimited opportunities presented by thelegendarily promising Asian market. What experienced global playershave learned is that the key to getting good grades in Asia 101 is toknow the rules of engagement with Singapore's government and culture,to develop local partnerships, and to work around the island'schallenges.
Who You Know Tells How Far You'll Go
Business partnerships are valuable anywhere, but in Asia, wherelong-term relationships are revered, who you know very much affectshow far you'll go. Singapore's IDA has developed a partnership modeldesigned to help multinational companies gain a toehold in Asia andgive homegrown companies an entry into the globalmarketplace.
The Infocomm Local Industry Upgrading Programme (iLIUP, pronouncedlike eye loop) is the cumbersome name of this program, an initiativethat tries to pair local entrepreneurs in joint ventures withmultinational companies. The objective: to blend the technology,know-how, and sales and global marketing power of the multinationalcompanies with the man power, entrepreneurial energy and local marketknowledge of the homegrown enterprises. Since iLIUP started in 1995,roughly 160 Singaporean companies have been assisted by 20multinational mentors (17 of them from the United States) includingApple, Compaq, IBM and Oracle.
Among the current participants in iLIUP are Sun Microsystems andiGine, an up-and-coming Singapore-based vendor of e-commerce software.For more than a year, Sun and iGine have been united in a partnershipthat serves both companies' business needs. The first fruit of therelationship is WeB2Biz, a new e-business engine developed by iGinefor Sun's partners and customers. According to Philips Lai, strategicbusiness development director for Sun's global sales organization,WeB2Biz has helped cut Sun's order-processing time from 12 minutes to15 seconds. And by leveraging Singapore's state-of-the-art telecominfrastructure, Sun has been able to test new Java and wirelessproducts that can't yet be deployed in most of the world. "[Thispartnership] gives us access to new markets, new technologies and newofferings," Lai says.
But there's a bigger picture here. Clearly, for a company like iGine,a partnership with a brand name like Sun is aonce-in-a-business-lifetime opportunity to take its show out ofSingapore and mount it on the world stage. For Sun, iGine presents ared-carpeted chance to establish an intimate relationship with ahomegrown Asian company that in turn can give Sun the credibility,experience and references it needs to penetrate the entireAsia-Pacific marketplace.
"Doing business in Asia is not easy," says Chang Huong Tan, CEO ofiGine. "The opportunity is here, but if you don't get into the rightrelationships, [market penetration] can't work at all. And theserelationships can take years to develop."
Sun's Lai agrees that the iLIUP partnership pays dividends throughoutAsia. "Other countries look at what happens in Singapore," he says. "Astrong reference from here does help. It's a door opener."
Please Come to Singapore
Suresh Prabhu, chairman of Apex Systems, an insurance industrysoftware vendor with offices in India and Singapore, stronglyencourages global leaders eyeing his marketplace. "Don't look atcoming to Asia as a pain in the butt," he says. "Look at it as a wayto expand your business."
Yes, the governments, cultures and customs impose barriers, he says,but not insurmountable ones, not when weighed against the benefits ofentering the Asian marketplace and leveraging localresources.
"Look at what's possible in Asia that will help your bottom lines,"Prabhu says. "Look at the skills available in places like Singaporeand China."
All success requires, says Prabhu, is "a mind-set change."