Next year, Andy Tan marks 15 years as a SAFRA volunteer. The 45-year-old SAFRA Management Committee member runs a creative agency, The Thinc Group, and hopes to make more contributions by SAFRA’s 50th anniversary in 2022, especially with the new SAFRA club at Choa Chu Kang becoming fully operational by then.
What Are Your Roles?
As a creative professional, chairing the SAFRA Corporate Branding Committee is a natural progression for me. I help oversee the strategic branding and communications of SAFRA with a team of specialist volunteers who come from the creative, branding, marketing, digital and communications spheres. As part of the new Smart SAFRA committee, I help oversee SAFRA’s push towards a SMART Nation as we keep pace with a growing membership and the changing demographics of more tech-savvy Nsmen. We will continue to invest in Information Technology (IT), harnessing the power of networks, data and info-comm technologies to improve membership servicing and operational efficiencies, and to build a closer community of NSmen members.
Improvements can be seen in online booking/registration and payment, information updates, and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) analytics. This is an exciting, forwardlooking initiative that I’m very happy to be a part of. Chairing the SAFRA Choa Chu Kang Development Committee, I help oversee the development of SAFRA’s seventh club. Taking inputs from focus groups and key stakeholders in Choa Chu Kang, including NSmen and SAFRA members, we will cater to the lifestyle needs of 87,000 NSmen and their families in northwest Singapore with the concept of “Fitness and Wellbeing”.
Our interest groups will cater to our members’ passions, giving everybody a place to bond, mingle and pursue what they love. I am honoured and humbled to lead this project – this is the highlight of my volunteer journey.
What Are The Challenges?
The biggest challenge we are facing now is the explosion of connectivity and information within the digital realm. We are competing for attention against a thousand and one things happening in the lives of our current and prospective members; we need to reach out to them more incisively and relevantly, and to deliver the right things at the right points in time. We are looking at a SAFRA 360 communications framework to enable convergence of CRM data, club infrastructure, membership benefits, digital channels and branding efforts into one holistic communications effort. Members can expect a more personalised and relevant outreach to suit their life stages and needs, and more social connectivity with their National Service buddies and families. An example is the development of the mSAFRA app, which will soon be able to deliver relevant and engaging content tailored to members’ preferences.
What Keeps You Going?
I am passionate about both working and volunteering. It also helps that SAFRA is like one big family to me. I expect to reach my “career” high as a volunteer with the rise of the new SAFRA Choa Chu Kang, just in time for SAFRA’s 50th Anniversary celebrations in 2022. By then, I hope to have helped build an amazing new club, set the SAFRA 360 vision in place and transform SAFRA digitally with smart technology to create a seamless experience for members and their families.
