More local infocomm companies are receiving accolades on the world stage, if recent awards are anything to go by.

Regional Leaders
The Asia Pacific ICT Awards (APICTA) saw the Health Promotion Board, Stratech Systems Ltd, XID Technologies Pte Ltd and DataMark Technologies Pte Ltd walking away with awards.

Dr David Chew of Stratech credits his staff for the company's win

APICTA is an international awards programme initiated by the Multimedia Development Corporation of Malaysia to increase infocomm technology awareness in the community and assist in bridging the ‘digital divide'. Participating companies at APICTA come from the 16 member-economies: Australia, Brunei, China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Korea, Macau, Malaysia, Myanmar, Pakistan, Philippines, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Vietnam.

Stratech Systems, a winner in the research and development category for its Intelligent Airfield/Runway Surveillance and Foreign Object & Debris (FOD) Detection System, says that it is constantly innovating and developing state-of-the-art solutions to meet its customers' growing needs. Stratech's executive chairman Dr David Chew sees the award as recognition for the people working in the company. "It is a credit to their hard work and innovative thinking that our solutions are adopted in countries like the US, the UK, the Middle East, Australia, Singapore, Hong Kong and Thailand," he said.

Dr Foong Wai Keong of Ecquaria shared that the win strongly affirms home-grown technology

Dr Foong Wai Keong, President and CEO of Ecquaria Technologies whose company supplied the IT infrastructure for the Health Promotion Board’s Student Health Assessment Programme (SHAPE) and Integrated Dental Electronic Assessment for Students (IDEAS) system which bagged a Merit Award in the Healthcare Category says that the win is a strong affirmation of a home-grown technology. Moving forward, Dr Foong says that innovation will continue to be a core component of everything that they do. "We are continuously investing in product research and development as well as in our people and partners to introduce new ways of building Service-Oriented. "Innovation that delights" is our motto," he added.

Smaller Players Win Too
Meanwhile, Learning EDvantage Pte Ltd (LEAD) was a winner of the e50.startup award at the Enterprise 50 Awards 2006, while educational software developer ASKnLearn Pte Ltd was a winner in the Deloitte Technology Fast 500 Asia Pacific 2006 Program.

Mr Yee Jenn Jong from ASKnLearn believes that meeting customers' needs will ensure success

For Mr Yee Jenn Jong, CEO of ASKnLearn, being a winner in the Deloitte Technology Fast 500 Asia Pacific 2006 Program is an endorsement that their products and services are well supported by users. "We have anchored our products based on strong innovation and are glad that the market has taken to them well," he said.

Mr Victor Lee, Vice President for Strategic Development at LEAD, finds that Singapore businesses looking to win international accolades need to first think of the business and how they can meet and exceed the needs of their customers. "The awards will come in naturally if you can focus on your clients," he said.

Mr Yee of ASKnLearn added that companies looking to be future winners need to stay focused on providing value to customers. When customers support a company's products, the company will naturally enjoy growth. ASKnLearn is looking to do this as it takes its products regionally to sustain growth momentum.

Technology pioneers
The prestigious Technology Pioneer status awarded by the Swiss-based World Economic Forum – and which has previously been given to technology pioneers like Google and Napster – was given to two local biotechnology companies, Healthstats and CyGenics. Mr Steven Fang, founder of CyGenics, said he would be carrying the Singapore flag to Switzerland to receive this award in person. "This will be a great opportunity to showcase Singapore to the world," he said.

Dr Ting Choon Meng, CEO of Healthstats said that it is important for new companies to protect and understand the full potential their intellectual property. "We should learn how to exploit our inventions to the fullest. Something may be invented for medical purposes, but recognising that the technology can be harnessed for other purposes is something we are not so good at," he noted.

Double Cisco Accolades
Singapore Technologies Electronics Ltd (ST Electronics) won the dual accolades of being Cisco Systems' prestigious Gold Partner Certification and Best Customer Satisfaction Achievement Award 2006.

Mr Richard Gray of CISCO Systems presenting the Best Customer Satisfaction Achievement Award to Mr Lim Soi Yeong, Director, Sales & Marketing of ST Electronics

This means that ST Electronics has some of the industry's best-trained network engineers with a strong customer satisfaction focus, as well as meeting the specialisation and post-sales support requirements set down by Cisco. According to Mr Seah Moon Ming, president of ST Electronics, these skills are the result of ST Electronics' successful development and delivery of several Cisco network systems over the years.

"We are delighted to be awarded Cisco's Gold Partner Certification as it recognises our level of expertise and quality in the industry," said Mr Seah. "Customer service and how our end-users value our products and solutions are extremely important to us. The high customer satisfaction rating that we have received from Cisco will encourage our engineers to continue to improve, and meet more exacting standards in network systems."