Funding is just one aspect of government support. Businesses will also need to work with government agencies to build the right strategy and vision to succeed

This year’s Singapore Budget is building upon past initiatives to ensure the workforce and businesses in the country stay competitive and relevant in the disruptive economy. The aim is to help local companies build “deep” capabilities, scale up, receive financing, and adopt technology for long-term business sustainability.

To help small-and-medium businesses (SMEs) and startups decipher the Budget, Xero held its first edition of Xero Community, a quarterly series of events to share valuable insights into key trends. The goal is to empower businesses to deep dive into the 2019 Budget.

The panel of experts consisted of Chew Mok Lee, Assistant CEO of Enterprise Singapore; Keyis Ng, CEO and Co-founder of Cafebond.com; Natasha Toh, Co-founder and Director of The Fun Empire; and Kevin Fitzgerald, Regional director of Xero Asia.

The hour-long discussion focused on four main themes: driving business success and expansion, technology adoption, increasing access to working capital, and upskilling the workforce; giving startups an insight into how they should leverage the new government grants and schemes as they chart their growth in the new year.

Fostering business success and expansion

The government’s efforts to offer a range of support for Singapore’s diverse range of small businesses, from budding and mature startups to traditional businesses, were warmly received by the business community.

Among the announcements this year were two new initiatives to help businesses scale and commercialise: Scale-up SG and the Innovation Agents programme.

The former aims to help high-growth local firms to grow and internationalise more rapidly, while the latter is a pilot programme that will allow smaller companies to draw commercial and technical advice from a pool of experts, drive their innovation efforts, and accelerate growth.

In addition to the demand for newer, more innovative products driven by the increasingly affluent middle-class in Singapore, companies can also look beyond our local shores and venture overseas to tap into a larger customer base to increase their market share.

The new Budget initiatives also looked at strengthening business fundamentals — talent, innovation, and market connections — to ensure the businesses have done their due diligence before making the big move abroad.

Chew explained that Scale-Up SG programme aims to help Singapore create future champions and support companies that have a global aspiration. This will, in turn, provide better jobs to bolster the Singapore economy and serve as role models for aspiring entrepreneurs.

On the other hand, the Innovation Agents programme brings in intermediaries who are able to marry technology with the business, to ensure that the value of IP can be better extracted to drive business growth.

The objective is to increase the success rates of budding startups in their early stages of growth. Asia Regional Director for Xero, Kevin Fitzgerald, highlighted the importance of bringing experienced industry experts into the fold and serve as mentors to small businesses, commenting that, “sometimes, you don’t need an army — just the right connections and the right people.”

Also read: Deciphering Singapore Budget 2019 for founders and business owners

Supporting tech adoption

As part of its focus to accelerate tech adoption among SMEs, the Singapore government announced it will allocate S$1 billion (US$740 million) over the next three years to fund initiatives that will drive these efforts.

This will include expanding the SMEs Go Digital programme and piloting the new Digital Service Lab (DSL) initiative.

As a founder of a team-building events company, Toh relied on grants like the earlier Productivity and Innovation Credit (PIC) to buy tech equipment, and the current Productivity Solutions Grant for digital accounting solutions — upgrades that would allow the company to improve productivity.

She said that her employees were significantly pleased with the additional services and that adopting tech solutions led to a marked improvement in productivity.

Going digital is not just about delivering higher productivity rates, Chew said. It can also create new business opportunities. She cited an example of how a food company is no longer constrained by physical shopfronts, but could now leverage vending machines to sell its food to customers over a larger geography, and even export its product overseas.

Although it is clear that tech adoption is imperative to business success, many companies still lack the confidence to embrace it. Fitzgerald suggested entrepreneurs overcome this by breaking down daunting problems to smaller manageable ones and then take them on one at a time.

Access to working capital

In order “to deepen the pool of smart, patient capital” as outlined in the Singapore Budget, the government has established SME Co-Investment Fund III. Existing financial schemes were also consolidated into one Enterprise Financing Scheme (EFS) umbrella, providing common eligibility criteria and a single application platform. This aims to help participating financial institutions (PFIs) and enterprises easily navigate between the various financing schemes. Additionally, the SME Working Capital Loan scheme (which will come under the EFS in October), has also been extended for two more years.

These are various avenues that help businesses fund their growth; but without a sustainable growth trajectory, the companies are still at risk of failing.

There also needs to be a clear strategy when sourcing for alternative financing — both the business owner and financial partner need to be aligned in their goals and strategy to ensure long-term growth and success.

Also read: Harnessing digitalisation: key takeaways from today’s startup founders

Upskilling and reskilling the workforce

To remain competitive in the rapidly evolving global economy, workers — both young and old — need to be retooled and adopt new skills to remain future-ready.

Toh shared that her company’s employees used online learning platforms to learn new skills. This allowed them to learn at their own pace and subsequently apply the new skills at work.

The objective of upskilling is to future-proof one’s career and expand on current skills to facilitate more strategic and analytical work. Upskilling the workforce ensures that Singapore remains future-ready with a talent pool to foster a resilient and competitive economy.

All in all, government grants should be seen as an additional support system to aid businesses as they execute on their strategy based on judicious planning.

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