Accelerating transformational growth
In FY2023, we continued to advance steadily in our three axes of growth – expanding across Asia Pacific, doubling down on our government and enterprise businesses, and growing our digital capabilities. We delivered a strong revenue performance propelled by growth across key lines of business coupled with contributions from our recently acquired subsidiaries. Operating revenue was 18% higher at S$2.7 billion with contributions from our global business rising from 5% to 15%. The enterprise and telco sectors accounted for 33% of revenue, up from 26%. Having made investments to boost our digital capabilities amid the ongoing digital transformation in the region, digital projects now contribute more than half of our overall revenues.
Advancements across strategic axes
Building on our two Strategic Business Groups, Gov+ and Telco+, we established an Enterprise Strategic Business Group. This new group combines our core capabilities and industry expertise across industries such as healthcare, transport, finance, industrial and commercial, to drive business growth and help clients accelerate their digital transformations.
Under Telco+, we are co-creating with telcos from 15 countries in areas such as digital telco transformation and AI-powered business models, as well as 5G-enabled revenue models. These efforts have helped to expand our Enterprise and Telco+ revenue by 49%, compared to the same period a year ago.
To better support our clients’ digital transformation needs across the Asia Pacific, we scaled up our global delivery capabilities. We set up a strategic delivery centre in Vietnam, complementing two existing ones in India and China. This delivery centre offers bespoke infrastructure services and taps into a pool of international tech talent, enabling our clients to run operations more efficiently and at optimised costs. It will employ a team of more than 3,000 by 2025, and contribute towards optimising our cost to serve.
We accelerated our capabilities in cloud transformation and migration services in the government sector. Additionally, Gov+ partnered with clients to harness technology to enhance experiences and lives in our community, such as launching an augmented reality experience for Gardens by the Bay and an award-winning app called FWMOMCare to better monitor the health and movement of hundreds of thousands of migrant workers for effective contact tracing and improved pandemic management.
Growing our digital capabilities
We launched Global NEXT, creating a regional digital powerhouse championing innovation in cloud, data, digital and platforms. With over 2,000 tech specialists across 18 specialisations, this global team straddling Singapore and Australia provides clients with a comprehensive end-to-end suite of technology services that will enable them to be at the forefront of technology and innovation.
NEXT also leverages our innovation centres in Singapore, China and Australia to help our clients transform their businesses digitally. Our pillars in cloud, data, digital and platforms will address key digital trends such as multi-platform digital world, digital humans and more that could impact governments and enterprises over the next few years.
We partnered with the Tiong Bahru Community Centre and Tiong Bahru Market Hawkers’ Association to pilot Breeze, an innovative transport app to provide greater convenience and better driving experiences for users through real-time hyper-localised information. Breeze integrates disparate and multiple sets of data, and adopts AI and video analytics, leveraging NCS’ long-standing expertise in the land transport sector and digital innovation capabilities to drive positive impact for communities.
Developing talent for a digital economy
NCS is committed to building a Singaporean core of tech talent and offering multiple pathways of success for our people. In October 2022, we partnered the Infocomm Media Development Authority and institutes of higher learning to launch a new integrated work-study programme, Fusion, for polytechnic graduates. Over the next two years, we will hire and train 400 of them, sponsoring their studies at the Singapore Institute of Technology or the Singapore Institute of Management. This follows the success of NCS’ ongoing work-study programme for university graduates, Nucleus, which will hire and train another 800 graduates over the coming two years. A similar talent development programme for Institutes of Technical Education graduates is in the pipeline and will offer 400 placements.
As part of our efforts to build an engaging workplace, we rejuvenated NCS Hub, offering our people an enhanced suite of collaborative spaces and dedicated learning zones. We are confident this new home will enable them to build deeper connections and foster greater creativity and innovation. We also launched NCS Mentors, to complement our core NCS Dojo apprenticeship-centric training and development programme.
Pressing ahead toward our goals
We have been privileged to play a key role for over 40 years in transforming the way people work, live and play in partnership with governments and enterprises. Our pivot from a traditional ICT service provider to a technology services firm with strong digital capabilities that serve the Asia Pacific region has ensured we are more closely aligned with our clients’ needs and we are seeing significant progress as a result.
Although the global economic situation remains uncertain, we will continue to be agile, innovative and collaborative with a focus on three key priorities in FY2024 – operational rigour, delivery excellence and client value co-creation – to remain competitive in a changing business environment.
We are excited about the future and the opportunities that lie ahead for NCS as more advancements in technology emerge. We are delving deeper into areas such as generative AI, metaverse, sustainability and digital trust to help our clients harness technology for business transformation, growth and innovation.
We remain committed to our purpose to advance communities by partnering with governments and enterprises to harness technology. We will continue to do this by bringing people together to make the extraordinary happen.
