How SMEs Can Easily Hop On The Digitalisation Bandwagon

It has been 19 months since the pandemic shook the planet, shutting down traditional businesses and restricting the social activities of humans to the confines of their homes.

While traditional businesses relying on human contact and direct interactions have been struggling, the digital sphere has been booming unequivocally. A McKinsey report stated that 75% of people using digital channels for the first time indicate that they will continue to use them when things return to “normal.”

By now, most C-suite executives have led their companies to digitise at least some part of their business to protect employees and serve customers facing mobility restrictions as a result of the COVID-19 crisis. Humans are witnessing what will surely be remembered as a historic engagement of remote work and digital access to services across every domain.

The Pandemic Vaulted Digital Transformation

Recent data from global surveys done by McKinsey and Co show that due to the pandemic, human society was forced five years forward in consumer and business digital adoption in a matter of around eight weeks.

Banks have transitioned to remote sales and service teams and launched digital outreach to customers to make flexible payment arrangements for loans and mortgages. Grocery stores have shifted to online ordering and delivery as their primary business. Schools in many locales have pivoted to 100 percent online learning and digital classrooms. Doctors have begun delivering telemedicine, aided by more flexible regulation. Manufacturers are actively developing plans for “lights out” factories and supply chains and the industry buzzword today is increasingly stressing on sustainability.

Why SMEs Are Facing Challenges In Digitalisation

As some regions begin reopening, businesses are considering how to return to some semblance of full speed in an unstable environment in which lockdowns will ease and in stages. In doing so, they will need to confront structural changes that are playing out.

Customer behaviours and preferred interactions have changed significantly, and while they will continue to shift, the uptick in the use of digital services is here to stay, at least to some degree.

Companies will need to ensure that their digital channels are on par with or better than those of their competition to succeed in this new environment. If China offers us any lessons, digital laggards will be substantially disadvantaged during the recovery.

And yet a high percentage of business owners in Malaysia are still grappling in the dark with digitalisation, because the current tools in the market do not cater to local SMEs, says Dato’ Westin Chew, CEO and Founder of SMEGO, a multi-functional mobile app that enables businesses to automatically create an online store and track the necessary data without any technical know-how.

How SMEs Can Expedite Digitalisation Efforts

SMEGO focuses on delivering highly sought after business solutions at a low entry price as a strategy to assist business owners to digitally transform faster and more effectively.

“Solution providers in the market were built on a website or which require them to purchase a software base rather than Apps, as they often focus on large Small and Medium corporations rather than micros. Large corporations are willing to pay high customisation fees -furthermore, some are internationally based. Some players in the market do have similar functions but with higher costs compared to SMEGO.

Dato Henry Tay, founder of Hascott Group says his company has been using SMEGO since the MCO and they have realised that it is easier to handle both their retail and online store through the platform.

“It helps us save a lot of time and we can easily upload the product images and start selling faster with our own SMEGO E-store. Payment is almost immediate and it is simple with no hassle. It’s never been so easy to manage both retail and online through a single platform,” he says.

Many more companies like SMEGO are emerging, who understand the pain points of business owners and know the local culture well.  Their competitive advantage is a low price strategy with the most needed function, localisation, simple and easy to use interface, suitable for all industries and operational anywhere at any time, he says.

Providing a solution to bridge backend to selling in one system, Dato’ Westin says his company addresses the key pain points faced by SMEs. First by focusing on handling messy inventory, accounting, paperwork, and stock issues.

Second, with the upcoming bridge to multiple marketplace channels such as Shopee or Lazada in a single button, there are a million sellers in the marketplace today who are now able to use SMEGO to manage all their retail selling and online selling with an automatic update to their stock inventory, accounts and in a single platform rather than the usual self-key in. 

Third, a high percentage of sellers in the market has undocumented sales or bookkeeping therefore with Dato Westin’s SMEGO solution and account function enables small business owners to have their business in the system for future bank loans or grant applications for easy expansion purposes.

By offering a simple and easy onboarding platform with both offline & online digital solutions, companies like SMEGO has helped clients move over from conventional to digital solutions easily using systems on their mobile phone that automatically sync to any given E-store, which comes with a shopping cart, subdomain & payment gateway and a solution to sell faster than before.

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