Prudential Singapore, Ngee Ann Polytechnic, ST Engineering, and Switch, have teamed up to provide support to small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in their efforts at cybersecurity and digitalisation for business transformation and growth.
As one of Singapore’s top life insurance firms, Prudential launched their collaboration with Ngee Ann Polytechnic in September of last year by introducing a digital commerce playbook geared at helping SMEs make the shift to digital.
The playbook’s pilot run began with 30 SME participants. Under the partnership, students from the school were assigned to these SMEs to give practical help on using the technologies that best meet their business’ needs. For instance, some students helped SMEs create compelling content for social media and supported chatbot development on the SME’s website.
SMEs are an integral component of Singapore’s economy, accounting for 99% of businesses and employing 70% of the workforce. Yet, they lack access to resources necessary for growing their businesses. The SME Digital Transformation Study, which surveyed 400 SMEs, found that over half of those polled said it was too expensive to digitalise because of high implementation costs. They also cited effects of Covid-19 and lack of employees with digital skills as factors.
Prudential’s chief customer officer, Goh Theng Kiat, believes digitalisation is essential for businesses to better engage their employees and customers and to optimise processes.
“SMEs recognise that going digital is not just about being future-ready but a matter of survival in the current pandemic. To support SMEs through this challenging time, we are collaborating with different industry players to empower them with knowledge, experience and tools, to accelerate their digital transformation so they can stay relevant to their customers,” Goh said.
Hand-in-hand with digitalisation comes the need for cybersecurity, which is where ST Engineering comes into play. Under their partnership with Prudential, they are offering training and customised solutions for monitoring and combating attacks for safeguard data.
SMEs are especially susceptible to digital attacks because they lack resources and expertise in cybersecurity. The Cyber Security Agency of Singapore said that nearly 40% of attacks in 2017 involved SMEs.
To tend to the changing face of work environments in pandemic times, Prudential is working with Switch to provide SMEs access to coworking spaces at competitive rates. Hybrid work arrangements are becoming more and more common, allowing SMEs to try out coworking spaces instead of having a physical office space.
These initiatives are all under Prudential’s ongoing support as a SkillsFuture Queen Bee to ramp up skills development in the SME sphere.
In October 2020, they unveiled the SME Skills Accelerator programme to provide SMEs with the skills and resources to grow and innovate, upskill their employees, and improve employee retention.
Prudential is committed to the continuous growth of its SME ecosystem of partners to support SMEs business growth and cater to the evolving needs of SMEs in Singapore.
