The company will run its business on Google Cloud, empowering employees with enterprise-grade AI tools to reshape eCommerce logistics and achieve productivity gains
Singapore, Dec. 12, 2023 – Google Cloud and Singapore Post Limited (SingPost) today announced a strategic collaboration to accelerate SingPost’s digital transformation journey and drive its next phase of sustainable growth. This multi-year collaboration aims to empower SingPost employees with easy-to-use AI-powered tools, helping them boost productivity, streamline repetitive tasks, and foster seamless collaboration with external partners and customers.
From left: Noel Singgih, Group Chief Information Officer, SingPost; Vincent Phang, Group Chief Executive Officer, SingPost; Mark Micallef, Managing Director, Southeast Asia, Google Cloud; Axel Bader, Enterprise Team Lead, Singapore, Google Cloud
Noel Singgih, Group Chief Information Officer, SingPost, said: “SingPost is no stranger to embracing innovative technologies, from data analytics to warehouse automation, to meet the evolving needs of our customers. This, coupled with strategic investment in high-growth markets, has resulted in international logistics generating 86% of the Group’s revenue – a key milestone in our ongoing transformation into a technology-driven logistics enterprise. Our positive engagement with Google Cloud to develop an AI solution—through their joint AI Trailblazers initiative with the Singapore Government—gave us the confidence to embark on the next step of this journey with them as our strategic cloud services provider. Google Cloud’s industry leadership in responsible AI, sustainable technology innovation, and cybersecurity will be core tenets in establishing SingPost as a trusted and customer-centric logistics leader in the Asia Pacific region.”
Establishing a secure foundation for digital, AI-driven innovation
SingPost has migrated all IT workloads hosted in its on-premises data centers to Google Cloud and is in the process of harmonizing and consolidating its technology stack, establishing a robust and secure foundation to power accelerated AI-driven innovation. This strategic move has not only yielded substantial cost savings of 30% in IT operations, but also allows SingPost to take advantage of Google Cloud's AI-optimized infrastructure, purpose-built to handle complex AI workloads, while ensuring cost-efficiency, scalability, and sustainability.
To further safeguard its enterprise data and applications, SingPost is also deploying Google Cloud's BeyondCorp Enterprise platform to enforce zero trust security principles like multi-factor authentication and device verification, ensuring that only authorized staff can access proprietary company information.
Supercharging logistics and supply chain management with gen AI
A successful participant in the AI Trailblazers initiative, SingPost has developed an AI solution prototype to streamline its eCommerce logistics operations. This solution eliminates the administrative burden of manually re-entering partner and supplier information from trade documents—including those with handwritten inputs—into its database. It also liberates employees from the drudgery of digging through document archives to find the information they need, enabling them to focus on making strategic decisions and delivering high-quality customer interactions.
Built using Google Cloud’s Vertex AI platform, foundation models, and Document AI, SingPost’s AI solution transforms unstructured data from trade documents into a searchable repository, with a gen AI-powered chat interface that comprehends natural language queries and surfaces accurate and relevant information.
In collaboration with Google Cloud, SingPost will scale the use of its solution, with the goal of optimizing supply chain orchestration across its logistics network and facilitating faster deliveries. Additionally, SingPost is leveraging Vertex AI to explore solutions for several other use cases, including automating internal legal document reviews and providing more personalized interactions to enhance customer care.
Vertex AI gives customers full control and segregation of their data and intellectual property. When using Vertex AI, SingPost retains complete control over its data, including prompts and user inputs at inference time: the data does not need to leave SingPost’s dedicated Google Cloud environment, is encrypted both in transit and at rest, and is not accessible by Google Cloud or any other external parties.
Philbert Gomez, Vice President and Head, Digital Industry Singapore (DISG)), said: “We are pleased that the AI Trailblazers initiative has assisted SingPost in building a gen AI solution that will increase productivity. This is in line with Singapore’s efforts in establishing ourselves as a thriving hub for AI innovation by encouraging more experimentation and rapid prototyping. We look forward to more Singapore-based companies creating impactful gen AI applications from this initiative.”
Democratizing the use of gen AI tools across the workforce
SingPost is replacing previous legacy productivity tools with Duet AI in Google Workspace to help its employees write, visualize, organize, and connect more meaningfully. Duet AI in Workspace enables a powerful new way of working, by seamlessly embedding gen AI into familiar cloud-native communication and collaboration applications like Gmail, Drive, Docs, Slides, Sheets, Meet, and Chat. With Duet AI, SingPost’s sales teams can produce memos and presentation decks with greater velocity in response to requests for proposals (RFPs), while marketing and customer support teams can speed up marketing copy development and reduce average response times to customer inquiries.
To empower citizen developers and foster a culture of digital innovation, SingPost is also deploying Duet AI in AppSheet. Integrated with Google Workspace, Duet AI in AppSheet lets anyone rapidly build applications for streamlining work tasks by describing their idea using natural language, all without writing a single line of code. This could include applications for frontline service management, inventory management, delivery route optimization, and more, with IT administrators setting governance parameters for how these applications can be created and consumed.
Mark Micallef, Managing Director, Southeast Asia, Google Cloud, said: “By investing in AI development and collaborator platforms with built-in privacy, control, security, and compliance capabilities, SingPost is empowering every employee—regardless of their role or function—to identify and capitalize on new opportunities for work optimization. This serves as a strong example of how a large enterprise can move swiftly to extract diverse benefits from gen AI adoption. We look forward to continuing to support SingPost’s deployment of enterprise-grade AI solutions, accelerating the company’s time-to-value and reinforcing its leadership in delivering innovative and trusted eCommerce logistics services at scale.”
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About Singapore Post Limited
Singapore Post Limited (SingPost) is a leading postal and eCommerce logistics provider in Asia Pacific. Its portfolio of businesses spans national and international postal services, warehousing and fulfillment, international freight forwarding, and last mile delivery, serving customers in more than 220 global destinations. Headquartered in Singapore, SingPost has over 4,900 employees, with offices in 13 markets worldwide. Since its inception in 1858, the Group has evolved and innovated to bring about best-in-class integrated logistics solutions and services, making every delivery count for people and planet.
About Google Cloud
Google Cloud accelerates every organization's ability to digitally transform its business and industry. We deliver enterprise-grade solutions that leverage Google's cutting-edge technology, and tools that help developers build more sustainably. Customers in more than 200 countries and territories turn to Google Cloud as their trusted partner to enable growth and solve their most critical business problems.
