In the last few kilometers of a marathon, runners often find themselves pressing on in small groups, sharing the same pace and encouraging each other to go on, observes Chun Kit, a regular marathoner and Practice Lead for Mobility at NCS. “They may not have started with you, but they are the ones accompanying you at that stage of the journey. It is something that I never fail to draw inspiration from.”

Chun Kit has taken part in 10 races in as many years, and he often draws parallels between those experiences and his life journey.

Completing his first marathon was an inspirational experience, he recalls. “It was a triumph of mind over body. I did something that I never thought I could do, and that inspired me to do many things that I always wanted to but didn’t have the courage to try.”

The same year that he completed his first marathon, Chun Kit mustered the courage to make a career switch from a quality assurance engineer in the commercial sector to a project manager in the government sector. Eight years later, that same courage spurred him to leave the government sector to join NCS.

“By then, I was feeling a bit stagnant and complacent in a comfort zone. With passion for emerging technologies, I decided it was time to join a professional services company where I can challenge and upskill myself in terms of my technical competencies.”

As Practice Lead for Mobility, Chun Kit strategises and leads the delivery of enterprise-grade mobile applications and platforms for NCS’ clients, which also involves working with them on digital transformation and application modernisation. Continuously growing the size and deepening technical competencies of the Mobility team is his top priority. 

It is important for his team members to keep developing new skills to keep up with the latest trends in technology, he says. He gives the example of cross-platform mobile development, which enables businesses to quickly engineer and deploy their mobile assets on a variety of platforms without recoding for each native operating system (Android, iOS) and platform.

He believes that this is an important skillset for his developers to pick up. “Either you know your enemy and conquer it, or be replaced by it,” he said. “There is still a technical position for native mobile app developers but we need to equip ourselves for the rise of new technologies such as cross-platform development and Progressive Web App (PWA). That explains why the Mobility team does more than just mobile app development now as we have upscaled and widened our competencies to deliver end-to-end application modernization for clients, covering mobile application services, platform management services and API (application programming interface) and microservices orchestration.”

‘We can’t learn swimming until we are in water’, he says. With strong support of NCS leaders, he provides his team with practical platforms such as client projects and proof-of-concepts to apply and deepen what they have learned.

Digital transformation goes beyond just digitalising manual processes with technologies and requires an end-to-end mindset, a re-thinking of ways to meet client real needs. While his team has been helping clients to embark on a journey of digital transformation on various scales with tailored strategies, the core success factor is always the trust and respect between his team and clients.

“Clients can tell if we are really putting their interest and needs as top priority. Blessed with my highly competent and professional Mobility team, we established strong rapport with our clients who respect and entrust us with their digital transformation. Clients have the confidence that we will only provide the most appropriate solutions. Expensive technologies don’t equal digital transformation”, he said.

Chun Kit likens his team to the marathon pack he finds himself running with in a long-distance race. “As we run, we find more and more people coming together, running at the same pace, and it creates a positive energy that attracts more to join the group.”

His team is getting bigger, and they are running at the same pace. “Delivering excellent services to our client is our goal. Internally, we need to pace ourselves, keep the momentum and build up the synergy to chiong to the goal.”