At the recent Institute of Service Excellence at SMU (ISES) Global Conference on Service Excellence, SMU Provost and Deputy President (Academic Affairs), Professor Rajendra K Srivastava said that Singaporean firms have it easy, given the strength of our regulatory systems. He was speaking on trends that the service industry must deal with as it gears up for the future. "The environment here is very conducive to business. But as we expand out of Singapore and begin to work in other regions, we have to be more adaptive. We cannot expect to get the same kind of environment that we do in Singapore," he observed. "We have to really get out of our comfort zone." However, Minister in the Prime Minister's Office Lim Swee Say believes that Singapore's service industry need not worry. "The advances in technology (are) actually creating a lot more space for us to do things differently, hopefully do things smarter, better. And yet at the same time, the customer's expectations are also evolving very rapidly thereby creating even more opportunities for us to innovate, to capture new markets," Mr Lim noted.