Commentary News | Singapore Business Review

Experience-Innovation: Are Singaporean companies ready?

Digital and social media have changed all the rules of advertising, communicating, and getting customers to experience products and services. Many conventional approaches are now extinct. Others are under the scanner, to see if they justify their costs. Newer ones are ready to be tried.

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Three ways to rapidly grow your start-up in Singapore

Success stories like mobile e-hailing service Easy Taxi provide inspiration to many in Singapore looking to build a successful, fast growth, global business. However, it appears the majority of start-ups are a long way from achieving this kind of rapid growth and global success. According to Bloomberg, 8 out of 10 businesses fail within the first 18 months.

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Here's what Singapore firms need to know about talent sustainability

A 2013 report by McKinsey Global Institute highlights talent as one of the five US game changers that could substantially boost GDP.

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4 ways crowdfunding benefits the Singapore real estate market

In the last few months, the crowdfunding movement has been gaining momentum in Asia and more people are becoming aware of the potential that crowdfunding has. There have been two major crowdfunding events organised in Singapore in July and August namely Expo for Property Investing and Crowdfunding (EPIC) and Crowdfunding Asia.

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Why don't F&B outlets in Singapore check out their customers reviews before they arrive?

It always amazes me in this day of so much data that the brand owners with the most to gain by using it never do. Have you ever experienced a travel brand or F&B brand that you have booked with using the data from your social media postings to make your stay more personalised or your meal extra special? Nope, me neither.

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A paradigm change in Earth Observation: How Singapore can be part of it

Location-based services have become commonplace with the ubiquity of smart phones and internet connectivity. Users can now get access to vast quantities of information stored on cloud servers virtually wherever they are in the world, and the cloud processing power available to them is far superior to that of the mobile phone, tablet, laptop, or PC that ordinary users can carry or have available in their home or business.

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Singapore's enterprise communications cannot rely on consumer-grade applications

As we all know, Singapore is the second biggest adopter of the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) trend (90 percent of Singapore businesses have accepted this practice in the workplace), after South Korea (93 percent) and followed by China and Taiwan (88 percent), according to iPass, a global Wi-Fi services provider, in its 2013 Global Mobile Workforce Report.

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New labour laws boost demand for skilled Singaporeans

The Government's new Fair Consideration Framework introduced on August 1st has increased competition for local talent in the jobs market. Singapore's very strict policy when it comes to hiring foreigners will further exacerbate the skills shortage in Singapore, and this is likely to have a significant impact on the hiring of middle-income employees.

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Data marketing strategy for Singapore small businesses

Living in the information age, consumers are constantly bombarded with numerous advertisements and content which can be overwhelming. The focus of most marketing initiatives has been to identify the ideal customer.

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Singapore's disengaged workforce and the millennials

According to a Gallup Survey, 76% of staff in Singapore are disengaged with their work. This is one of the highest rates of disengagement in the world, and has forced many Singaporean firms to urgently address the issue of employee engagement.

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A checklist before applying for a Singapore Employment Pass

In Singapore, the benefit of securing an Employment Pass (EP) for a foreign employee is immense. This is because employers, in an EP application, face neither the restriction of foreign workers quota nor the additional costs of foreign workers levy, which are applicable in other types of work visas prevalent here such as the work permit and S Pass.

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Introducing your new colleague - Bob, the robot

According to the study "The future of employment: how susceptible are jobs to computerization?" by Oxford Martin Programme on the Impacts of Future Technology, 47% of the jobs in the US will be automated. So look around your office; 47% of the people holding those jobs would be gone. Hopefully these are the annoying people and you don't belong to any of them.

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5 cyber security measures Singapore SMEs should know

If you thought that cyber criminals only target big businesses, think again. According to the Verizon 2012 Data Breach Investigation Security Report, 67% of cyber security compromises in 2011 happened in organisations with just 11 to 100 employees, which fits the description of SMEs and start-ups in Singapore.

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Tourists to Singapore attracted to twins

Singapore is looking down the barrel of the first overall decline in tourist numbers since 2008—the dawn of the Global Financial Crisis. In fairness, 2014 has been a bad year. Tragic travel disasters and regional instability have both hurt tourist numbers - most obviously from China, though other markets have also been impacted. What is clear though is that an incident in one country in our region can have an impact on all of South East Asia.

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Are Singapore's financial institutions keeping up with FATCA?

FATCA stands for the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act and was enacted by the United States Congress back in 2010 to encourage tax compliance by US persons using non-US financial accounts.

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5 pitfalls Singapore SMEs should avoid when expanding overseas

According to the SME Development Survey 2013 by DP Information Group (DP Info), fewer Singapore SMEs are doing business overseas (54 percent in 2012 compared with 46 percent in 2013). This could be due to the perceived risks of internationalisation.

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