1.   What are the key transformations during your tenure?

Technology is increasingly important in and impacts our daily lives. In the past 6 years, SIAA has made strides that impacted the industries both locally and overseas. Our members benefited from the various programmes which we have organized over the years. Most impactful is the cross-border activities which included 23 study trips of different scale to visit a total of 11 countries in addition to the iMAP schedule. These overseas exposures helped to shape and transform
SIAA into a leading brand and an industry opinion leader in transformational technology

2.   What is the single achievement which made SIAA proud?

We created two iconic events – IoT Asia and SIRE, and these shows have grown in size never expected before in our history. They have become our signature and sustainable machinery to propel the Association to greater heights.

3.   Where do you see SIAA going in the next 6 years?
SIAA must remain relevant and build upon the strengthening of its membership base. I always remember that as a President, I serve the interests of our members. The executive team must continue to serve the membership and not let our limitations dictate the service level. What we could not have done yesterday, can be done tomorrow. By the time SIAA crosses 40 years old, I see a trade association with three peaks of attainment:

(a)   An established culture of membership quality service
(b)   A framework of execution driven by DATA insights
(c)   An iconic opinion leader on A.I.R - both locally and regionally

4.   What advice would u give the next president and his team?

Think BIG, Start SMALL and Act FAST.

5.   What would you do next?

I would probably focus on the International Media & Public Relations. SIAA has matured into a strong association. We have long established a network of local and overseas alliances. It is time to evolve. We can play in the greater international arena now. I would focus on building international alliances to create opportunities for SIAA and our members.

FROM TERENCE,

1. What are your immediate priorities?

(A) Our Immediate and past President- Oliver, had left a big shoe for me to fit in over his impressive track record for the past 6 years of serving the association.

The most immediate task is to continue to push on the momentum that we had garnered with our “AIR” initiative which is Automation, Internet of Things and Robotics. My immediate priorities is to realign internal resources which is our secretariat team and provide them with an overall focus direction that the association will be heading forward in the next 12 months.

From here we continue to leverage on the support of our council members to build up the ECO systems for IoT and Robotics which we had being planning and executing for the last 1 year and work forward towards a concrete action plan that can be rolled out to benefit our members and recruit more SME companies who see digital transformation as part of their growth and sustainability path. We need to continue to take the leadership position in the IoT space as well as the Robotics and AI space.

Finally we look forward to also work out transformation needs for our local manufacturing in terms of automation requirement towards the smart manufacturing initiatives. With the association outreach initiatives, we had formed alliances with numerous overseas trade association, as well as technology association this will provide a platform for our members to engage with them to work on collaboration and projects which are related to their business focus. SIAA had also established working relationship with our local Trade Association and Government agency and with this members can leverage this platform to establish possible initiatives with our contacts and from there enhance their skill sets, opportunities to work on some government grant and government technology framework to improve their capabilities and core competence and participate in overseas trade show and seminar through the support by Enterprise Singapore under the IMAP reimbursement scheme to reduce the marketing and sales costs in going regional.

(B) From here our members can leverage on the framework and platform that SIAA had established and use this as a stepping stone to engage other possible partners to co-work in projects, product development and also market development with local and regional organization and hence making the journey smoother and easier and also sharing experience with others members over this initiative. Hence this will provide the eco systems for developing and opening up new business opportunities in the region.

(C) Strengthen membership, and to encourage members to take a more active role:
Moving forward we would align council members who is assisting to take the role of the various initiative that SIAA is working on to team up with our secretariat and move forward on a focused direction with a set objective to initiate different program such as membership strengthening , IoT and robotic ecosystem program. We will be actively engaging new and current members to come on-board to join us and also create opportunities for our members to strengthen their competence, skill sets and also regional expansion plan. We look forward to transform our initiative to an ecosystems that will support the association foresight in term of industry transformation and technology advancement. Our objective is to engage the “AIR” community to develop capability and competence and drive the association to be a though leader in this framework.

2. What would you do different in the next 3 years?

We are not going to move out of our focus for the next 3 years and with this there is not much difference from the current initiatives. The main difference that we will be doing for the next 3 years is to continue to build on the area of Strength for SIAA, engage our members in this area and develop ecosystems that will transform and put the thought into action.

We will spend less effort in building standard and documentation and move our resource towards creating the possibilities and engaging disruptions. We will embark on a project-orientated approach to integrate the plan into an actionable initiative that the association will work on. We focus to develop a team for the association so that the association can strengthen its core and build a brand and with the association become relevant and sustainable in the long run. Hence this involves immerse communication among members, secretariat, industrial practitioner, technology adopters and with this frameworks we will work with respective government agency to source for funding to ensure that the project is viable to be implemented and supported by local SME companies.

3. What is your vision of SIAA in 5 years’ time?

I see SIAA as an ecosystem pivot: A business catalyst & a network multiplier. SIAA remains faithful to our mandate: A.I.R (Automation, Internet Of Things & Robotics) Over the next 5 years, SIAA will work towards building collaborative ecosystems and engaging projects to further our reach & network. This is so that our members can easily tap on these networks/frameworks for their business purposes. To these extents, our foundation projects: The Singapore Pavilions efforts (Internationalization/ helping members to sell in the international market), IoT Asia and Singapore International Robo Expo (SIRE) are building blocks that will continue to connect regional buyers and business partners to further enhance SIAA members' market competitiveness.

The next 5 years we will witness the paradigm shift that the association will be working towards digital transformation, industrial transformation and framework standardization and with our current team; We Are Ready!