Here's a glimpse of SingTel's upcoming software for SME market

Will it contribute much to group's profit?

According to Macquarie Research, it recently made a follow-up visit to SingTel’s Business Solutions Centre, where the telco firm revealed further progress in the development of new products and services.

An area of focus on this trip was products and applications for the SME market, which Macquarie believes will increase SingTel’s attractiveness to customers, even as domestic peers gain access to these customers via the NG NBN (next generation national broadband network).

Here's more from Macquarie Research:

We were shown a number of new software as a service (SAAS) products aimed at increasing the stickiness of SME customers while aiding the SME’s own cost efficiency.

While still relatively small in its contribution to group earnings, we believe it is these value added services that will ultimately differentiate SingTel from its peers.

In many instances SingTel has worked together with software and solution providers to customise products for SMEs in Singapore.

An example of this is its One Office product, which is essentially a suite of apps from Google customised for Singapore SMEs. SingTel typically enters into revenue share agreements on these projects. 

SingTel is also working closely with various government institutions to develop solutions in areas such as health and education. These projects are medium- to long-term, which, as they get implemented, will first show up as systems integration type jobs for NCS before generating longer term service revenues for the management of the services as well as the provision of the infrastructure required to run them. In some instances this is already showing up in SingTel’s revenues