Video: 10 Minute IT Jams - An update from Temus

Singapore's tech sector is in a race. For Rajesh Rao, Managing Director of Technology at Temus, the stakes could not be higher. "Boards around the world have realised that digital is fundamental and critical to future business," he said.

Temus, founded in 2021 to speed up digital transformation for enterprises and public agencies in Singapore and beyond, was shaped by the urgent needs exposed by the pandemic. "COVID accelerated these trends because enterprises had to go digital, they had to offer online services and accelerate their digital implementation to ensure customers get access to their services," Rao explained.

Three challenges, Rao said, loom large for large organisations: disruption from digital-native newcomers, the need to build their own digital platforms to defend their market position, and rising expectations for the user experience driven by consumer technology. "The consumerisation of user experience from smartphones and digital devices have led enterprise users to expect the same look and feel in the ERP and backend applications," he said. In order to deliver this, "technology executives need to upgrade their user experience and to do that they have to take care of their legacy businesses and ensure that it gets transformed using all these digital technologies."

But moving fast is often not enough. Rao outlined how most enterprises have already migrated applications to the cloud; the trouble, he said, is too many have chosen "lift and shift", simply moving legacy software onto cloud platforms. "There was no assessment whether digital transformation benefits actually accrued to the organisations or not," Rao observed. The results, he added, are often disappointing: business units remain frustrated, costs can actually rise, and digital-native competitors continue to win market share.

"The benefits of the cloud have not been translated into enterprises and the C-level executives are faced with a challenge about what to do next," he said. "Existing lift and shift approach will continue to cost more and more challenges and it's not the right way to go forward. Instead a new thinking is required."

This, said Rao, is why Temus exists. "Temus was actually established to solve this particular problem," he said. The company's answer is its "Vision to Value" framework, anchored by a focus on measurable business results. "The Vision to Value framework not only creates a big picture vision and roadmap but also implements the solution to create real business values for end customers," he said.

Instead of wholesale migrations, Temus begins with rationalisation. "The most important step is to rationalise the portfolio and consolidate the number of applications," Rao said. He explained that, using automated tools, Temus often finds many overlapping or redundant applications within client organisations. This enables them to "shrink application portfolios by at least 40 to 50 percent", before making careful decisions about which applications to move to the cloud, which to retire, and which to modernise or replace.

These decisions are made using the "7R" model: rehost, replatform, refactor, re-architect, repurchase, relocate, retire, or retain. "There are a lot of options, as you can see over here," Rao said. "Each application is treated uniquely based on its characteristics."

Once rationalised, focus shifts to digital-native infrastructure: cloud platforms, containerisation, "DevSecOps" for secure development and operations, automation and continuous optimisation. "Customers are also very closely involved in this journey and the idea is once we set up this infrastructure the customers can use this infrastructure to build more digital native applications on top of this infrastructure and they are more and more independent in their cloud journey," he explained.

Business outcomes are paramount. "Cloud value realization focuses on efforts which should be translated to actual business objectives. For example, at the end of it, plain business should be able to increase customer satisfaction or add new customers or increase revenues or reduce costs," said Rao. "By doing these real business value activities, more and more of these transformation initiatives can be taken and they generate more funds which can be used to fund more digital transformation initiatives – which becomes a positive self-reinforcing cycle."

Importantly, Rao rejects large, unwieldy transformation programmes that take years to produce results. "Cloud value realization enables enterprises to digitally transform using agile methodologies and move towards a minimum viable product within a few sprints instead of waiting for multiple years," he said. "By doing this in small chunks the IT team will be able to prove to business that modernization is actually generating business value and it's generating benefits."

Temus, a partnership with Temasek and a global digital services firm, builds on international best practices but localises for Southeast Asia's needs. Rao shared case studies from the region, including a ground-up superapp for an insurance client intended to boost customer engagement far beyond the usual "purchase, claim and renew" touchpoints. Other successes include major cloud migrations for enterprises, and tight partnerships with leading hyperscale cloud providers to rapidly deploy the latest innovations. "At the end of the day the customers are driving business value using these innovations and ensuring that either their revenues are going up or their customers are increasing or their costs are coming down," he said.

Temus's approach relies on early engagement, extensive consulting and cross-functional teams, assessing business and technology challenges holistically before launching technical work. "We offer a service where we initially come in and we work to determine what are the challenges which are faced by enterprises and what are the various solutions…even before we start a formal engagement," said Rao.

So, what should C-level executives anxious about digital transformation do next? Rao is clear. "Just reach out to us and then we'll be happy to engage," he said. "This approach ensures that there are no surprises, everyone is collaborating together and there's an agile management which is used to ensure the business problems are solved together."