Industry Industrial real estate Company JTC was formally incorporated in June 1968, and has since built over 7,000 hectares of industrial real estate and 4 million square meters of factories for more than 7,000 local and multinational companies. Employees 838 IT staff 60 Annual IT Budget S$10 million (US$6.3 million) for fiscal year 2005, ended Mar. 31, 2006

JTC Group CIO Yap Chee said: "Without people, process could not be executed properly and technology implemented successfully."

Having earned recognition as a ZDNet Asia Smart50 company affirms that this strategy has worked to JTC's advantage, and Yap was quick to pay tribute to his "colleagues in the user community, their management and IT department"--all of whom play an important role in ensuring the company sees success in every project it commits to.

More than just a property developer, JTC is always willing to look at new technology and deploy those that will enable the organization to provide better service and a competitive edge.

For example, the implementation of a token-based single sign-on system helped reduce the number of password-related helpdesk calls by 90 percent, providing an annual cost savings of S$261,000 (US$163,621).

Yap explained: "[The project] enabled our staff to access, with one PIN (personal identification number) and one token, all corporate applications easily and quickly--whether they did so remotely or in the office."

Last year, JTC's customer services division also implemented the Statement of Accounts and Receipts System (Stars). This system enables a customer to instruct his bank to make a deduction from his account when he transacts online through SingPass, a Singapore government-led initiative that allows users to access various public services online with a single ID and password.

Through Stars, users are able to view their account statements online, and the initiative helped JTC achieve cost savings of S$57,000 (US$35,733) per year by eliminating paper statements.

JTC also underscored its commitment to improving customer service when it launched another major IT project Krypton in 2001, to provide a self-service portal for clients to access information and services anytime, and from anywhere.

The portal delivered a host of services where customers could, for instance, apply for a transfer of lease, renew or terminate their tenancy, or retrieve details related to their rented property.

In the next two years, JTC will continue to use IT to improve its operations and service. According to Yap, the organization has embarked on plans to implement a knowledge management system to "make the categorizing and searching of business data much easier". JTC will also be looking at using data mining and predictive tools to make better use of its large repository of business information, he added.

Other initiatives in the coming year include further enhancements to IT security, and a portal for JTC's business partners, allowing them access to some applications and update the status of projects they are working on.