With the worst of the pandemic over, EnterpriseSG’s chairman Peter Ong is helping Singapore companies get back on track rapidly while not losing sight of the long-term objectives

When Peter Ong took on the role of chairman of the newly-formed statutory board Enterprise Singapore (EnterpriseSG) in April 2018, he thought he had already seen his fair share of economic downturns. Little did he realise greater and more formidable challenges lay ahead.

A statutory board under the Ministry of Trade of Industry (MTI), EnterpriseSG was formed through the merger of International Enterprise (IE) Singapore and SPRING Singapore. Just four years into its formation, EnterpriseSG’s priorities have had to shift several times to adapt to a volatile business environment that companies — small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in particular — struggle to navigate.

However, Ong believes that companies in Singapore should not overlook longer-term objectives, even as they manage the “near-term challenges” of commodities shortages and supply chain disruptions in the current uncertain macro climate. Rather, companies should “have an eye on the future” by keeping up with business transformations and actively seeking opportunities abroad — services that EnterpriseSG offer as part of its mandate to help SMEs flourish.

Ong is uniquely qualified to offer his counsel on overcoming economic crises. In over 30 years of civil service, he “thankfully” received “long exposure” to the various key economic agencies and ministries. The Colombo Plan scholar started as a young officer in the MTI in 1989. While serving as the ministry’s deputy secretary, Singapore faced the Asian Financial Crisis (AFC) of 1997. Later in his career when he was back at the MTI as its permanent secretary, the world was hit by the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) in 2008.

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“I’ve been able to see how the economy and economic agencies have had to confront severe tests, like the AFC on one hand and the GFC on the other. That has given me a good set of instincts towards the kind of responses you need in a crisis like [the pandemic],” says Ong, who also served as head of the Singapore civil service from 2010 to 2017.

During his time in the civil service, he was also “very involved” in enterprise development policies and the internationalisation of the Singapore economy, which introduced him to the senior management of both IE and Spring Singapore, and helped with a “relatively easy” transition when he came on as the EnterpriseSG chairman.

At its merger, Ong says that EnterpriseSG conducted an “elaborate strategy review” to develop the organisation’s mandate, eventually narrowing these considerations down to three key areas from which Singapore’s SMEs could most benefit. These are productivity, innovation and internationalisation.

As Singapore marks its 57th birthday, some have described the country as hitting “middle age” — where incremental growth is harder to eke out compared to exponential growth in earlier years. However, Ong says the key is for local companies to compete more effectively by producing more efficiently and creating sales through higher-value goods.

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He explains: “We wanted to help our SMEs enhance productivity while also recognising that for these enterprises’ goods and services to command a premium, there has to be innovative products and services. Innovation has to be part of our lifeblood.”

In a sense, this initiative is driven by the limited size and population of the city-state. “The Singapore market is very small; it’s no use being the ‘king of Ang Mo Kio’,” quips Ong. “You really have to go out to the markets globally. Thankfully, the global economy was benign at [merger] and opportunities were aplenty,” he adds.

‘Largest unplanned impetus’

Almost exactly two years later after Ong became chairman, Covid-19 struck and quickly snuffed out many of these opportunities in the bleak economic landscape. Ong emphasises that although the pandemic brought with it additional considerations, EnterpriseSG’s overall mandate had not changed, with the importance of those three key areas of development staying intact.

“But of course, with the severe disruptions that Covid-19 brought, we had to very quickly also look at some other important imperatives,” he explains. These include cash flow, which became a “lifeline for all enterprises” in the face of economic disruption; the urgent need for digitalisation as consumer behaviour shifted online; and the redrawing of tenancy agreements as work-from-home arrangements became the norm, elaborates Ong.

Recognising that cash flow was becoming increasingly significant to SMEs, EnterpriseSG was able to roll out its enterprise funding scheme to offer loans “very quickly” to Singapore companies, Ong says.

In “pivoting” to help companies cope with mobility restrictions, EnterpriseSG was able to onboard “thousands” of retailers and F&B establishments to online platforms through its e-commerce booster and food delivery packages. Ong points out that Covid-19 was the “largest unplanned impetus for digitalisation” that EnterpriseSG had ever seen, which necessitated the availability of “ready-made solutions” that SMEs could “embrace” quickly.

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Finally, EnterpriseSG led the creation of the fair tenancy framework between landlords and their tenants, by working alongside industry brokers to create new agreements during the height of Covid-19. Moving forward, it will continue to affect how these tenancy relationships are managed, says Ong.

Having helped steer Singapore’s SMEs through the pandemic, he believes that EnterpriseSG today stands in its “third time frame”. With national borders and the global economy reopening, the statutory board’s focus has shifted from helping companies deal with the crisis to longer-term ones of internationalisation and innovation, bearing in mind the lessons learnt from the obstacles it has faced since the onset of the pandemic.

“We are telling enterprises now as economies reopen and as they face new near-term challenges, the resilience and the resolute actions taken during Covid-19 will stand them in good stead to [overcome these challenges],” says Ong. “But as SMEs work on near-term challenges, we are also reminding them to make sure they continue to transform to be ready for the 2030 economic vision we are all working towards.”

The Singapore Economy 2030 vision, unveiled in March, aims to grow Singapore’s export value from $805 billion in 2020 to at least $1 trillion by 2030 while doubling offshore trade value from US$1 trillion ($1.38 trillion) to US$2 trillion and increasing the country’s manufacturing value-add by 50% in the same period.

With more than 200,000 Singapore enterprises in the economy, Ong says they form a “very important group of entities”, accounting for employment for 70% of the workforce. As an SME-dedicated agency, EnterpriseSG helps them meet enterprise-specific objectives as well as Singapore’s overarching economic vision.

“We work with enterprises of all sizes, from the very smallest micro enterprises to heartland shops, to the small, medium and even larger corporations,” he says, adding that EnterpriseSG is not “alone” in undertaking this significant task.

Ong says EnterpriseSG works “very closely” with trade associations, its “global innovation alliance” partners in 15 countries, as well as with banks and telcos who serve as “distributors” for many of the agency’s schemes.

One such scheme is the productivity solutions grant, which had 28,000 company applicants in 2021 alone. But Ong is quick to point out that EnterpriseSG also offers non-financial assistance.

“Many people think of us principally as a grant-disbursing agency, which we are not. We offer both financial and non-financial assistance, but especially the latter,” he says. In the case of internationalisation, Ong says EnterpriseSG assists companies that are thinking of expanding overseas through the many factors that will come into play.

“We have to sit down and talk to companies about the product-market fit they are considering. We ask them which specific markets their interests lie in and we try to cater, very specifically, the kind of assistance that will meet the needs of that particular internationalisation effort,” says Ong.

He adds that this process often also involves introducing companies to partners in their target markets to provide access to the networks and ecosystems that exist in that area, as well as connecting them with government agencies who may be regulators of the industries they are involved with.

EnterpriseSG has 36 offices around the world that have “built networks” in specific markets. While most of its offices are situated in Asia, the agency has an established connection to the more “mature” markets of North America and Europe and a growing presence in the developing regions of Africa and Latin America.

“Companies can tap on the global offices and global innovation alliance partners that we have, or even our local partner the Singapore Business Federation that has Singapore enterprise centres in Ho Chi Minh City, Bangkok and Jakarta,” he says. ““I often tell companies that the partners we introduce to them, the knowledge about markets that we share with them and the networks that we connect them to overseas are worth far more than the $50,000 cash grant they may desire.”

In tandem with EnterpriseSG’s international partnerships, Ong says that they take the same approach with digitalisation, offering assistance according to the kind of company each SME is.

“Digitalisation is not only our enterprise development strategy; it’s also our economic and national development strategy,” says Ong, explaining the relationship between EnterpriseSG and its “sister agency” the Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA).

He acknowledges that there is a variance in the level of digital assistance that Singapore companies require across the broad sector that MTI classifies as an SME. According to the ministry’s definition, an SME is an enterprise with an annual sales turnover of under $100 million, or that employs fewer than 200 workers.

As such, EnterpriseSG has taken a tiered approach when assisting companies with digital transformation. Its basic model of assistance, Start Digital, is a “preliminary” initiative that provides ready-made solutions that help SMEs with day-to-day operations such as human resource management, accounting, finance and digital marketing. The agency also offers industry-wide digital plans at the next level. Ong cites the example of their efforts to drive the school bus association’s adoption of digital means to connect parents, students and bus drivers.

At the highest level, for digital “champion” companies, the agency offers its digital leaders programme (DLP). So far, nine Singapore companies including Bee Cheng Hiang Singapore, CK Shipping, Federal Packaging Industries and IHub Solutions have taken up the programme.

“The DLP is very bespoke; we work with a select number of companies, because the process is very labour-intensive, on company-specific digital plans, even going to the extent of supporting the manpower needed to help them build a digital team within that company,” says Ong, adding that these select companies are “committed to implementing” these tailored digital plans.

He adds that EnterpriseSG’s outreach does not end with SMEs, as Singapore serves as the regional headquarters of many larger local and multinational corporations (MNCs).

“Many of these larger corporations have ‘problem statements’ — innovation needs they cannot themselves provide the solutions to. They may feel that it is easier to go outside of the company in search of innovative solutions for the problems they face,” says Ong. “We organise open innovation challenges and invite startups and SMEs to propose solutions to their problems.”

Ong notes that EnterpriseSG held over 100 open innovation challenges such as the Southeast Asia Open Innovation Challenge — which saw it working with “large corporations” including Sime Darby from Malaysia, Thailand’s Siam Cement Group and the Thien Minh Group from Vietnam — as well as in the energy sector, including “energy majors” like Chevron, Shell and Exxon.

“They offer tremendous opportunities for us to have open innovation when we bring our SMEs and startups to pitch their ideas for pilot contracts with these larger corporations,” says Ong.

Looking ahead, it is through these platforms of internationalisation and innovation that Ong has identified growth opportunities for Singapore companies as the global economy works towards a full reopening.

“There has not been too much economic scarring as a result of Covid-19, part of which is because of the series of government assistance that has kept companies going, but also because many of them have been able to be agile,” he says. “As an economy, we are still facing tightness in our labour markets, so the challenge now is to go out and grab new growth, mainly from outside of Singapore and primarily through innovative products and services.”

“We want to mature the group of Singapore global enterprises that will be globally competitive in multiple markets outside Singapore, create a source of good jobs for Singaporeans and fly the Singapore flag high,” he adds.

For companies that have been considering expanding abroad but have been put off by global economic shocks this year, Ong advises them to reach out to EnterpriseSG, which is prepared to help them in “different ways”.

“The way to manage a crisis is not to just hunker down and stay in Singapore. There are opportunities out there you will never discover until you venture out,” says Ong. “And in venturing out, we can journey with you.”

EnterpriseSG steps up SME path-finding quest

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