Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises are Increasingly Seeking a Balance Between Tactical Initiatives and Achieving Strategic Business Goals with the Support of Digital Technologies
Despite having 'by default' better adaptability to even the subtlest changes in their business environment, nearly two years of pandemic economic circumstances increasingly threaten the survival of small and medium-sized enterprises. The accumulated experience and business acumen of small entrepreneurs help, but in order for small and medium-sized enterprises to cope with the trends brought by the corona crisis, they must innovate their business models and upgrade or even change their IT systems to compensate for any lag behind competitors and ensure longer-term growth.
Closer, More, Better
Survival in business today means being as close as possible to your customers, offering them the best products and services, but also engaging your employees more. According to a recent analysis by the consulting firm Oxford Economics, which surveyed 2,000 executives from 19 countries, the top priority for small and medium-sized enterprises is to improve the customer experience and increase employee integration. This is particularly important in retail (48 percent), logistics (47 percent), and banking and other financial services (40 percent). Note that these are sectors that were most severely affected by the pandemic, mainly due to global disruptions in supply chains. Interestingly, this research shows that maximizing these two factors – customer and employee experience – surpasses goals such as increasing profitability or mitigating risk. Although, those two goals are also high on that list.
Standardization, Communication, Transformation
If small and medium-sized enterprises want to strengthen all aspects of their competitiveness, both in relation to themselves in terms of size and resources, and in relation to international corporations, they need the right technology. And that technology was only recently available to large companies with significant financial resources. Technology that will help them standardize business processes, improve communication – both internal (human resources to each employee, each employee to every other employee in the team) and with the market (close coordination of customer service, marketing, and sales) and technology that will lead the company to increase operational efficiency and daily innovation. Of course, there is also digital transformation. Both small and medium-sized enterprises are digitalizing, increasingly applying artificial intelligence, using analytical tools, and automating all processes they can automate. Or, if they are not doing so yet – they should. As soon as possible.
Intelligent Tool
Various tools are used for business standardization, but small and medium-sized enterprises – which want to be able to react quickly and adapt as flexibly as possible to the constantly changing market circumstances – must work intelligently. And they must have the right tool. One such tool is SAP Business ByDesign. It is a cloud-based enterprise resource planning (ERP) software designed specifically for small and medium-sized enterprises. But also for newly established, developmental (startup) companies. It connects all departments and functions (human resources, finance, sales, procurement, marketing, etc.) and employees of the company, containing well-tested best practices over time (and in other companies) for each business process and a constantly integrated tool for thorough, predictive analytics that results in the most complete, equally presented information necessary for making the best decisions in real-time. The latest version of the SAP Business ByDesign solution has just been released.
