Small and medium enterprises are the bulwark of modern economies. Studies show that SMEs employ as much as seventy per cent of jobs in developed countries. Despite this fact, SMEs face a myriad of challenges including the challenge of access to financing with SMEs facing dry credit taps and higher interest rates. Moreover, the regulatory regime of SMEs is burdensome leading to these businesses falling short in complying to the rules.
The above situation has created a conundrum for SMEs and this has led to their failure with statistics indicating that majority of SMEs do not make it past their fifth birthday with a small percentage making it into the big league. The role of ICT in boasting SMEs chances of survival is critical. In this article, read about how Big Tech companies can help achieve this feat.
Affordable Software
Software can be expensive making it out of reach of many small businesses. Big tech companies can develop software for SMEs to enable these businesses to leverage on technology to increase their capacity. This capacity could be customer outreach, stock management and increased sales. By achieving such milestones, SMEs will reduce their mortality.
Data Mining
In a world driven by data, SMEs inability to capitalize on their data to make informed decisions is worrying. Big tech companies with their immense data mining capacity have the ability to help SMEs make sense of customer data, sales and other data in their possession to provide better services, introduce new products and anticipate future trends. In this way, SMEs will not be caught unawares by unanticipated customer needs or industry shifts. They will be on the beat.
Data Security
Data security is critical to businesses. For SMEs, this is particularly crucial for current and future operations as loss of data may mean halted operations. Big tech companies could provide affordable data security services to enable SMEs to keep their data safe from hackers and unethical competitors.