By Chuang Peck Ming

UNITY is strength, especially for small and mid-sized enterprises when they band together to strike out into the global market where they face big competitors.

Thus the Singapore e-Government Services Alliance for Value Creation was formed in July last year, egged on by International Enterprise Singapore, which gave its support under the agency's International Programme.

The alliance SESA pools the expertise and services of five member firms - CrimsonLogic, Ditium Technologies, Elixir Technology, RSTN and V3 Teletech. CrimsonLogic, the anchor member, boasts two decades of track record in e-Government solutions that range from trade facilitation and customs, judiciary and tax to healthcare, information technology and security.

Ditium is a leading solutions provider for implementing document output and receipt workflow processes into government's communications framework, including data indexing, archival and retrieval.

Elixir empowers new generation e-government applications with business intelligence, while RSTN offers integrated business solutions for document imaging, content management, workflow and business process management for large-scale government projects.

V3 is the leading telematics service provider in Asia.

SESA leverages on Singapore's wide base of e-government experiences, bringing to the market the latest solutions and services that have been successfully implemented in Singapore and other parts of the world, according to Tan Sian Lip, vice-president for solutions and technology at CrimsonLogic.

'The forming of SESA was motivated by blending the five companies' offerings to compete on a larger scale in overseas markets,' he says.

'Together, our complementary suites of products and services employ the best of breed technologies that integrate well to deliver world-class end-to-end solutions.'

Based on a public-private partnership model, SESA offers wide-ranging end-to-end services in e-government infrastructure, healthcare, labour management, law and justice, IT security, social security, tax and duty and trade facilitation.

SESA is targeting the Middle East markets where Internet usage is rising fast, offering the alliance 'enormous' opportunities to sell its expertise.

'If successful, the projects there will become important references, demonstrating the individual companies' capabilities and capacities to support the delivery of large scale systems when they bid for future projects,' Mr Tan says.

SESA has seen 'encouraging results' so far, according to him.

'CrimsonLogic's win of the United Arab Emirates e-justice contract early this year has greatly enhanced SESA's position in the Middle East,' Mr Tan says.

'This is not just with the additional physical presence of its anchor company in the Gulf, but the experience in going after large deals that potentially generate a revenue stream spanning from mid- to long term.'

This article was first published in The Business Times on 17 July 2008.