Helping charities to digitalise

SINGAPORE Pools' digitalisation journey started with the aim of staying ahead of online illegal syndicates - while driving productivity, efficiency and cost effectiveness. This is so that more resources can be availed for the community, and to strengthen responsible gaming measures to protect customers.

Since 2015, the company has been keeping abreast of the latest technology and reinventing itself. It set up the Transformation Programme Office to drive the agenda, and to re-think and re-design the business processes.

Singapore Pools' chief executive officer Lam Chee Weng said: "By continuing to digitalise and develop robust technology infrastructure, we are building a more flexible and nimble system that can adapt to new changes quickly, thus placing us in a better position to serve the community."

As the company has made strides in building its digital capabilities - in tandem with Singapore's move towards being a Smart Nation - it has remained cognisant of the needs of society and ensured that the charity sector is not left behind.

Being a close partner with Social Service Agencies (SSAs), Singapore Pools noticed the gap in lack of technology talent, financial resources and industry-specific tech solutions for SSAs to keep up with the digital trend.

Mr Lam said: "Hence, there is an increasing need for charities to digitalise their organisations to raise productivity and to ensure that the data they keep is safe and secured."

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There is no single vendor that offers all the commonly required hardware and software applications for charities. Faced with constraints which include maintenance issues and mitigation of security threats, charities find it difficult to deal with them adequately, he added.

Affordable, secure solutions

"To thrive in an increasingly digital world, how digitally progressive charities are will determine whether they can properly meet their beneficiaries' needs."

Hence, Singapore Pools set up iShine Cloud in 2018 to leverage its IT infrastructure and resources to benefit the charities.

An initiative that is aligned to the company's purpose to do more for community benefit, iShine Cloud is supported by the National Council of Social Service, and aims to offer charities an affordable and integrated suite of charity-specific solutions via a secure cloud-based platform.

The core service offering includes Microsoft Office 365, accessed via the Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI), which provides a secure computing environment with centralised storage in Singapore Pools' data centre, and a disaster recovery site to ensure optimal system uptime for operational continuity.

The Human Resource Management System (HRMS) - a cloud-based solution that provides the modules for payroll processing, staff claims and benefits, leave and timesheet management - and the Accounting Systems offered by iShine Cloud "are simple and easy to adopt, yet fulfilling both financial and management needs", said Yip Yuen Fong, iShine Cloud's CEO.

"iShine Cloud helps to empower charities to achieve better governance and productivity benefits by automating previously manual processes. This will enable charities to free up more time and resources to better focus on serving their beneficiaries," she added.

Besides the productivity tools and software, iShine Cloud also provides solutions such as Donor Management and Volunteer Management Systems to manage and engage donors and volunteers via a self-service portal for donations and event registration.

As at August 2021, iShine Cloud has onboarded 36 charities with 1,804 users.

In FY2020/21, the team, together with its technology partners, conducted more than 20 complimentary online clinics for charities. Close to 400 professionals across the charity sector attended these sessions.

Andy Sim, vice-president and managing director, Singapore, Dell Technologies, said: "Technology has been a lifeline during the pandemic as it helped charities shift operations online and continue helping the communities they serve. Embracing digital technologies will help charities support their beneficiaries more effectively and better engage with volunteers and stakeholders."

MINDS is one of the oldest social service agencies in Singapore serving Persons with Intellectual Disabilities (PWIDs), and one of the many users of the programme.

Kelvin Koh, MINDS CEO, said: "Every year, MINDS serves more than 3,000 PWIDS and their families. In the coming years, this number will increase as we seek to serve more residing in our community, often requiring us to manage confidential information of our stakeholders. Hence, it is important that we leverage innovative technologies to ensure that we are able to expand into more nimble and flexible operations while ensuring data security so that we can better serve the needs of our beneficiaries."

However, in the midst of MINDS' technology transformation journey to enhance data security and to allow staff secured access to information from any location, Covid-19 struck. Therefore, it found itself in a position of introducing these changes virtually as face-to-face training was not possible.

Despite the difficulties, MINDS engaged iShine Cloud for its core solution offering on June 16, 2020, for 700 users across 19 locations in Singapore. The onboarding process of users continued virtually, and additional onboarding services were custom-created for the organisation especially for the less tech-savvy and senior users.

MINDS managed to go-live for all locations on Jan 29, 2021, as planned, allowing users to operate in a safe environment where data is securely saved in cloud storage through the use of VDI.

Video analytics

In line with its digitalisation journey, Singapore Pools has also launched two "digital outlets" at Funan Mall and Tanjong Pagar in 2019 and 2020 respectively. These stores are furbished with digital wall displays and tablets at the counters, which allows its community partners to be featured.

"This gives them the exposure, elevating awareness for their causes and outreach efforts, and encouraging customers to support their fund-raising or volunteering activities," said Mr Lam.

When asked about the next step of its journey, he added that Singapore Pools is next piloting the use of video analytics at these digital stores to help increase awareness of the charities, and to improve call-to-action that customers can partake in, be it donating or volunteering.

"With video analytics, Singapore Pools hopes to gather two-way feedback of community messages such as how many people are looking at the message and their level of interest, while maintaining their privacy and not collecting any personal data. This will allow charities' partners to create better design content such as videos or images to improve outcomes for the charities."