The latest industry transformation map (ITM) for the professional services sector aims to generate about 5,500 new jobs each year between 2015 and 2020, the Economic Development Board (EDB) of Singapore said.
At the scheme launching on Wednesday (Jan 24), the ITM identified that among the new types of jobs to be created include artificial intelligence (AI) applications developers, marketing data scientists, and legal technology specialists. The ITM has also noted that particular areas showing high growth such as data science, analytics and AI within the sector is expected to post an average growth rate of 4.6 percent from 2015 and projected to reach a value-add of S$31 billion by 2020. The sector consist of companies in architecture and engineering, consulting, accounting, legal and advertising.
Unveiling the ITM at the official opening of digital marketing firm Dentsu Aegis Network’s Asia Pacific headquarters, Senior Minister of State for Law and Finance Ms Indranee Rajah noted that the sector’s growth will be characterised by rapid digitalisation and specialised solutions.
She said, “Analytics and artificial intelligence are examples of digital capabilities that feature strongly in advertising, consulting and engineering services. There will also be opportunities for strategy and operations consulting as clients embark on digital transformation with urgency.”
Additionally, she emphasised that there is no such thing like ‘one size fits all’ solution when it comes to helping the sector transform. For example, the roadmap for legal might be different from the roadmap for accounting, or the roadmap for engineering will differ from that for advertising. Therefore, each industry will have its own specific roadmap. However, Ms Indranee reminded that there are several important anchors in this matter, such as the making sure that professionals have the right skillsets and innovation capability, as well as supporting the employers to be able to innovate and grow.
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The ITM aims to support companies to build their capabilities in the high growth areas by providing innovative solutions while equipping the workers with related specialised skill sets. For instance, Singapore government will facilitate collaboration among companies through innovation platforms, such as the data sharing consortium that it is working on, which will bring together firms such as tech giant Google, ride hailing app Grab and software company Adobe. The consortium will promote data sharing to help companies gain more market and consumer insights, and thus help them develop new solutions.
Meanwhile, Dentsu Aegis is also setting up a data innovation centre in Singapore, in which the centre will focus on research and data development. Solutions produced in the country will be deployed to the company’s worldwide operations and used to solve clients’ marketing data challenges, Today Online reports.
Ms Indranee reiterated that the transformation of the sector will add more job opportunities in the future. She said that many job roles which did not even exist until a few years ago are now fast becoming jobs in high demand. However, professionals need to have the right skills to obtain these occupations. To facilitate this, new Professional Conversion Programmes will be launched this year in four key areas, including programmatic advertising, internet audit, user experience and user interface, and building information modelling.
Additionally, skills frameworks for relevant sectors will also be developed. Last October, a skills framework was developed for the accountancy sector which identified emerging skillsets such as data analytics and valuation research. Subsequently, career tracks and job roles were mapped out accordingly.
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