MTI Says Design Is a Growth Sector. The Back Office Needs to Keep Up.
At the Design Business Chamber Singapore Gala Dinner on 10 September, Minister of State FOC laid out the direction for Singapore's design economy. The headline was Design 2035 - a national push to position design as a core business capability that solves real problems across AI, climate change, and an ageing society, with people kept at the centre.
One point stood out for the business community: Singapore's design economy is being groomed as a growth sector.
That's good news for design firms, creative studios, and agencies of every size. But growth brings its own demands, and most of them land on the back office.
Why a design studio's accounting is different
Design work runs on projects. Client engagements, retainers, milestone deliverables, invoices tied to work completed. Revenue arrives in lumps tied to approval cycles, not a steady monthly rhythm.
That creates a specific set of needs:
Project-based billing - invoices that reference the milestone or phase they cover
Expense tracking per client and project - so you know which engagements actually make money
Cash flow visibility - because a profitable studio can still run dry between payments
Clean financials when bigger clients ask for them
Generic tools handle some of this awkwardly. Spreadsheets handle none of it well.
The quiet bottleneck in creative firms
Ask a studio owner what's stopping them from taking on more work. Rarely is it talent. Often it's the admin ceiling - the point where tracking projects, chasing invoices, and closing the books consumes the hours that should go to client work.
A design economy positioned for growth can't run on that ceiling. The firms that scale will be the ones whose systems scale quietly behind them.
What creative firms should look for
Accounting software that speaks the language of projects. Billing that ties to deliverables. Expense capture that sorts by client. Reporting that answers "which work is profitable" without a week of spreadsheet surgery.
Creative people didn't choose this profession to reconcile ledgers. But the business of being creative still needs books that balance.
OCi System handles project billing, expense tracking, and financial reporting in one platform - the boring parts, done properly - so Singapore's design firms can focus on the work that got them into this business.
Source: Ministry of Trade and Industry, 10 Sep 2026
https://www.mti.gov.sg/newsroom/speech-by-minister-of-state-foo-cexiang-at-the-design-business-chamber-singapore-gala-dinner/