New York City Launches $157 Million Plan for Broadband Expansion – OpenGov Asia

Already properly established within the area, Singapore is trying to grow to be a world innovation hub. One of the organisations spearheading this thrust is NCS.
About a month in the past, NCS made a triple acquisition in Singapore, Hong Kong and Australia to spice up digital capabilities and gasoline progress throughout the area. With this acquisition, ClayOPS, Velocity Business Solutions and Riley will be a part of NCS to strengthen information analytics and cloud capabilities. With the acquisition, NCS is embarking on regional progress and increasing into a world market.
OpenGov Asia had the pleasure of talking to Mr Howie Lau, NCS’ Managing Partner, Corporate Development and Partnerships, to discuss his journey in NCS and be taught extra about their plans to propel Singapore into a world innovation hub.
An enormous within the tech business, Howie joined NCS about 4 months in the past, bringing with him a wealth of expertise and information in varied fields of selling, company improvement and enterprise management.
Before becoming a member of NCS, Howie was on the Infocomm Media Development Authority for three years, the place he was concerned in expertise improvement throughout the know-how and media sector. Howie’s previous work expertise additionally contains serving because the Chief Marketing Officer and Head of Consumer Business at StarHub. As Vice President of Corporate Development at Lenovo, he was largely concerned within the ASEAN and South Korea markets.
Despite his illustrious profession, Howie is a down-to-earth man with an incisive understanding of the function of IT in the private and non-private sector, and a coronary heart for neighborhood affect – one thing he sees clearly in NCS. He seems ahead to the chance to work with governments and enterprises to advance communities, utilizing know-how to bridge the digital divide and create a vibrant, inclusive society.
Since its starting in 1981, NCS has grown and expanded to fifteen nations and is a number one know-how companies agency in Southeast Asia. Currently, it plans to increase into the bigger Asia-Pacific area, in addition to Greater China and Australia in addition to different markets the place it’s much less current. It will leverage the experience and capabilities it has in partnering with governments to collaborate with different enterprises. Further, its service organisation, NCS NEXT, gives its purchasers customised digital transformation plans and options in cloud computing, cyber safety, AI and different areas.
When articulating the path that NCS will likely be taking, Howie revealed that there are three levers of transformation that NCS is at present specializing in 1) Moving into bigger APAC, together with Greater China and Australia, 2) increasing NCS’ experience with the federal government into different enterprises and three) deepening their capabilities in its NEXT companies equivalent to AI, cloud, information, UI/UX and design journey.
“Increasingly, clients’ transformation are requiring new digital capabilities and options. They at the moment are now not requiring us to easily take care of their bread-and-butter cybersecurity, engineering and infrastructure wants. They are , for instance, the subsequent technology of AI bots to have their customer support achieved in a greater means, or trying for us to combine new options into their current information methods.”
While they may seem as separate, Howie notes that the three levers will not be discrete and divergent, however extremely complementary. In truth, all three levers of progress – natural progress, progress by means of partnerships and potential inorganic levers – need to be engaged. Digital transformation calls for modifications in conducive insurance policies and methods that tackle all three levers of progress and realizing which to make use of within the respective enterprise environments in different nations.
Partnerships, Howie firmly believes, will likely be efficient after they construct on mutual successes and work synergistically. The intention must be to ‘develop the pie’ collectively so that everybody advantages. A positive method to acquire new purchasers is to ship credible successes within the markets that NCS is much less current in whereas serving current ones. Existing successes display the power to ship for potential purchasers within the wider area.
Howie says he can not overstate the significance of staying related. In the sector, issues change always and shortly from a technical standpoint. Added to this, associated insurance policies evolve regionally and globally as governments attempt to higher guarantee sovereignty, security and fairness. Keeping up with all of this requires agility.
The secret’s staying in contact with what’s related, deciphering the complexity of recent applied sciences earlier than purchasers do and making sense of issues inside context. Ultimately, it’s about serving to purchasers chart a path to delivering their outcomes and output, tweaking know-how and options to match particular necessities.
“In the short-term, we’re centered on our purchasers and our expertise. On the purchasers’ aspect, we wish to be certain we’re in a position to ship credible successes within the markets the place we’re much less current, to display our spectrum of capabilities within the bigger area. We additionally wish to guarantee we’re attracting fascinating capabilities from others within the business, to affix us on this journey, as we do nice work for our purchasers that can also be bringing a optimistic affect to the broader communities.”
To increase its digital ecosystem NCS will all the time depend on the core of the enterprise: expertise and experience. While the corporate has an enormous expertise pool, it’s always trying to appeal to recent expertise to affix the ranks in doing groundbreaking work with a variety of purchasers and bringing affect to the communities.
For Howie, Singapore’s conducive enterprise atmosphere positions the nation properly to spearhead the constructing of an APAC digital ecosystem. The Singapore model is highly effective as a result of it’s seen as impartial with credible implementation. It has sturdy infrastructure, monetary stability and sound insurance policies that foster progress.
Moreover, the Singapore authorities has put in place FTAs that facilitate enlargement, collaboration and progress regionally. The nation is recognised as a superb place for startups to develop with many prime tech firms headquartered in Singapore, providing alternatives for collaboration and enlargement.
When requested concerning the function of the federal government vis-a-vis the non-public sector when it got here to progress, Howie takes the view that everybody performs a task within the ecosystem to assist to develop the vibrancy of the sector making certain a secure, equitable atmosphere – creating and sustaining requirements of operation, putting in coverage and infrastructure, creating capability and functionality and attracting native and worldwide expertise.
Within NCS, methods to draw expertise embody a Management Associate programme by which suitably certified graduates are supplied a 2-3 12 months traineeship with the corporate. They are skilled and mentored, with a transparent pathway to transitioning to full-time workers. Furthermore, the corporate additionally grows its expertise pool by means of acquisitions of different firms; the most recent examples being Riley and Eighty20 Solutions from Australia. When such firms are acquired, NCS typically retains key workers as they’re proficient and conversant in the operations.
Howie segued into the significance of ‘coronary heart’ in enterprise. It has been stated that tradition eats technique for breakfast, which means that regardless of the very best enterprise plans charted by firms, the cultural context by which they function can get in the best way.
To set up a conducive tradition, reasonably than change behaviour, Howie believes it’s crucial to work on perception and motivation. The ardour for transformation and progress requires getting folks inside the organisation to see prospects and to think about the general imaginative and prescient coming to life. Imparting imaginative and prescient and serving to the staff perceive and relate to it, will create and foster the suitable tradition.
Within the corporate, they use an in-house acronym  – AEIOU – to extra simply assist folks keep in mind what NCS is all about. Adventure, Excellence, Integrity, Ownership, Unity (AEIOU) is a set of cultural values that guides everybody at NCS. Having frequent values is significant in making certain that the consistency of mindsets is maintained.
Driving for excellence, Howie is satisfied, entails establishing a type of stability – weaving in methods of care for staff. Ultimately, the individuals who make up an organisation drive the expansion. This was epitomised when NCS refreshed its model on seventh July 2021.
He had a profound realisation that it was not nearly a change within the firm emblem. What struck him on the time, was the sense of delight and pleasure among the many workers as they launched into this journey of regional enlargement to grow to be a dominant participant within the international ICT business.
Howie provides that leaders who can stroll the speak are necessary within the equation for progress as a result of they forged an extended shadow.
Looking forward, Howie is happy about nurturing mutually helpful partnerships to make a big, optimistic affect wherever they function, be it by way of the convenience of entry to citizen companies, schooling, healthcare, wealth or job creation. At the top of the day, he desires NCS to be often known as an organization that makes a distinction on the planet by serving its companions and communities.

Recommended For You