Commentary News | Singapore Business Review

The retail saviour: “New Retail"---succeeding with Big Data and an omnichannel approach

As Singapore continues to embrace the mobile-centric economy, the way consumers interact with retailers is rapidly changing from traditionally shopping at storefronts, to e-commerce, and now to New Retail - retail experience brought alive by the integration of offline, online, logistics, and data across a single value chain.

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Singapore's competitive advantage

Singapore has long recognised the importance of developing its strongest natural resource: talent. Our city-state ranked highest in attracting and retaining talent in Asia in the 2017 Global Talent Competitive Index compiled by INSEAD. The report focused on talent and technology, and the findings show that countries which are mindful of how technology transforms society and organisations are able to best compete for talent.

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China-Singapore mediation initiative - what's in it for businesses?

Law suits can prove to be the worst means to settle a legal dispute. Court rooms have produced decisions unsatisfactory to all parties. Mediation on the other hand preserves a relationship, nudges feuding parties towards a middle ground and acquire a peaceful resolution. This is especially crucial when corporations do business across international borders.

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How Singapore investors can profit from unstructured data

Data that is collected in the business environment can be structured or unstructured. In general, structured data refers to information which is highly organised and which can easily be stored in rows and columns within database systems. On the other hand, unstructured data does not have a strict data structure, and is also not organised in a pre-defined manner.

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Are ICOs the High Yield Bond of the 21st Century?

Last month, Vitalik Buterin held a keynote presentation in Singapore, resulting in nostalgia taking over for me. For those who are not familiar with the cryptocurrency industry, Buterin is the 23 year old inventor of the blockchain-based Ethereum smart contract platform, and this event was part of his announced relocation to Singapore as a gateway to promoting it in Asia.

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DBS Bank: Transformation through strategy implementation

It was February 2010, four months after Piyush Gupta joined DBS Bank (DBS) in Singapore as its CEO. During the first 100 days of his tenure as CEO, Gupta had started to formulate a new direction for the bank which would focus on three areas: determining a new strategy and areas of focus; improving processes and technology; and creating a stronger culture.

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Let's move the AI discussion away from how it's going to steal all our jobs

Whilst reading two reports from The White House on artificial intelligence (AI) - Preparing for the future of artificial intelligence and Artificial intelligence, automation and the economy - I found that there are common perspectives and attitudes towards AI.

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Singapore Proptech: challenging the status quo

Real estate is the largest asset class in the world, worth over US$200 trillion. It is an industry that is traditionally conservative, old fashioned and largely dominated by wealthy corporations or individuals who are often older in age.

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Surely Singapore will be Southeast Asia's first cashless society

Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong is right to push for a cashless society in Singapore as a top national priority.

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Banking on FinTech: How Singapore banks are embracing FinTech today

It wasn’t too long ago when there was a rallying cry of how banks were not doing enough to try and beat smaller FinTech start-ups. Turns out that the banks were right. There’s no point in trying to “beat” them because financial institutions are bigger and have more resources at their disposal. So instead of going on the defensive, banks have now approached a more adoptive nature towards technology. Below is a look at how some big local banks are embracing FinTech within their organisations, from implementing bots to iBanking and other best practices.

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The future of payments in Singapore's Smart Nation

At this year’s National Day Rally on 20 August, when Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong spoke about the most important challenges and opportunities facing Singapore, the Smart Nation initiative was at the top of his agenda. Mr. Lee called on Singaporeans to embrace the unprecedented possibilities that technology has placed at their fingertips; remarking, “[The] Smart Nation is for all of us, young and old…the world is changing. Unless we change with it, we will fall behind.”

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Singapore business leaders migration to Hybrid IT

Hybrid infrastructures utilising cloud technologies are paramount to Singapore’s continued financial dominance in meeting long-term market demands. With the pressure of newer tech savvy innovations dominating Asia’s markets, top Singapore business leaders are redesigning business models that will combine new data with strong revenue streams.

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Why Singapore's accountants need to embrace the cloud before they can take advantage of AI

Singapore climbed the rankings to be the second most cloud ready environment in Asia, according to the latest edition of the Asia Cloud Computing Association (ACCA) Cloud Readiness Index.

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Ways to digitalise events in Singapore

From AR to VR and everything in between, technology has come a long way beyond a stand alone entertainment technology for future-seeking geeks in Singapore. It now helps create immersive experiences at events that attendees can enjoy and are likely to remember for a long time. After all, who doesn’t want their brand’s event in Singapore to be top of recall and talked about for months on end? Below are three top technologies that I have personally used and enjoyed introducing at events in Singapore to create lasting impressions:

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Approaching the era of e-wallets in Singapore

As in many markets around the globe, retailers in Singapore now face a rapidly shifting landscape. Sales are declining, consumer demands are soaring, and new disrupters are altering the very nature of what it means to be a retail business today. Perhaps no event is more emblematic of these changes than the arrival of Amazon Prime Now earlier this summer. Offering more than 20,000 products, with doorstep delivery in just two hours, shoppers in Singapore are eagerly embracing this new way to shop – while retailers work fast to differentiate their offerings as the competition heats up.

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Why learning is going viral in the digital age

There’s a revolution taking place in Singapore. It’s not one that’s being screamed from rooftops, but it’s catching like wildfire throughout businesses everywhere, cutting costs, increasing productivity and driving employee engagement.

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