Singapore came out top in the list of “Best places to do business in” issued by the World Bank in 2014. I moved to Singapore late September this year and as I settled down, I was curious to know how fast I would be able to get started in this country. I come from France (ranked 31st), lived for a few years in Sweden (ranked 11th), and recently Hong Kong (ranked 3rd) and therefore have my own frame of comparison when it comes to living and doing business in different countries (for info, US ranked 7th).
Settling down
From the onset, it went very fast and extremely smoothly in almost all aspects. In 3 weeks, our household was back to full productivity. We found and moved into our new house, our son started school, our nanny moved to Singapore with all the paperwork done. All bank accounts, insurance, and utilities are in place.
No doubt this is a high productivity environment where transactions are executed in an efficient manner. Most processes are thoroughly designed, documented, communicated, some automated, and generally executed at a fast pace. This high level of productivity can be observed for both governmental and commercial entities. The overall experience is also enhanced by the quality of infrastructure offered by the Singapore government (public transport like buses and MRT, 4G network) but also by companies like Uber, that further ease your commute.
Nevertheless, I still had to spend a lot of time figuring out what needs to be done, identifying the prerequisites for each item, and to best schedule the interactions with the different entities to avoid idle time and optimize the overall time. I also ended up sharing over and over the same documents (passport, work permit, proof of residence, etc.) with many of the service providers.
Room for improvement
There are still a number of improvements that can be driven by the individual process owners. The most important is better support of mobile platforms; indeed some operations/communication still require working on a desktop computer or even doing some paperwork. Full compatibility of IT tools with mobile devices should be the first priority of process owners or CIOs. Today, 60% of internet traffic is from smartphones and this number will only increase. 10% of US smartphone owners do not have fixed home internet connections and rely exclusively on their mobile devices. Nowadays, most people gain access to the internet for the first time through their handheld devices. Bottom line, most of these processes or workflows should be primarily designed for mobile platforms like iOS and Android to be future-proof.
Next level of productivity can be achieved only by changing the frame of reference
Mobile compatibility would be a good incremental improvement but how can we radically change the productivity level for such a process? Achieving such a leap requires us to look at things differently.
Instead of each entity improving their individual workflows, we should try to integrate these different steps and entities into a unified application/workflow that would define the typical journey of a new entrant in Singapore.
Imagine if there were an app that could guide newcomers through the process of settling down. Imagine if this app could synchronize and schedule the different interactions with various governmental agencies or service providers. All documents could be seamlessly shared between the future resident and the different agencies/service providers.
By integrating all touch points that a new entrant has with different parties into a common App, the complete process of settling down would be simplified and optimized by design. This would improve the newcomer's experience while all actors involved would benefit from increased productivity.
This integration into a single journey/workflow of different actors (Govt agencies, Corporations, NGOs) is still rare in the digital world despite being part of our daily life in areas such as healthcare, education, and city administration. This cross-organization synchronization is also needed for major life events like giving birth, moving to a new place, signing a first work contract, creating a business, buying a home, getting married, getting divorced, retiring, or dealing with the death of a loved one.
Why doesn’t it exist today? Why is it difficult to implement? There is a need for digital integrators.
In my opinion, the biggest barrier to such innovation is the lack of ‘organization’ in animating and leading such developments.
Who would own such an initiative or App? Who would finance it? This is not easy to define mainly because the productivity gains associated with this new journey are shared among the different actors.
Nevertheless, in the example above, I believe that it would be ‘Singapore society’ that would benefit the most from an easier and faster integration of the recently acquired workforce (through a positive impact on the GDP).
Let’s assume that an organization would sponsor and finance such an initiative. We would still need to find a ‘vehicle/container’ (from an organizational point of view) to support inter-organizational working groups, drive digital integration, and manage the portfolio of workflows and Apps resulting from this work. This ‘vehicle’ would act as a digital integrator while creating a collaborative environment for virtual teams that include members from different organizations.
Most of the time, solving societal issues requires close collaboration between NGOs, government, and the private sector. Countries, Cities, or Corporations that master this new type of integration through shared value creation will certainly gain an edge in our digital world.