Responding to changing industry needs and in a bid to "future-proof" its students, SMU’s School of Information Systems (SIS) will have a revised curriculum from next August. This will offer more flexibility for students to either pursue deep technical skills or a balance of technical and business skills, and emphasises creating innovative computing and information solutions for business and society. Students will need to take a core curriculum in the first two years of study, which focuses on combining business with IT. SMU SIS Dean Professor Pang Hwee Hwa said IT will be the central nervous system of not just most businesses, large and small, but also of metropolitan cities around the world and small city states, such as Singapore. He added that the emergence of new industries such as fintech and the widespread use of analytics across industries are demanding a new breed of employees who can use IT skills to create innovative solutions for business and society.

SMU SIS Associate Dean Professor Venky Shankararaman noted that the changes to the curriculum will offer students more flexibility. This contrasts with the current curriculum, where all students are trained in application development and then choose a second major. SMU is also enhancing its undergraduate offerings to include analytics skills in the schools of accountancy and business. From the 2017 academic year, the Lee Kong Chian School of Business will offer specialisations in analytics, joining the School of Accountancy's new data analytics track that was offered from August this year.