Staying ahead of the digital curve: How MSMEs can be at the forefront of new-age tech adoption 

Adopting technology in small and medium businesses is as important as adopting it in larger-sized ones. Technology not only provides the right interface and ease of doing business but also saves time, manpower, and cost to the company, while also helping in network building. Businesses need technological support to keep their work up to date. This is how technology is playing a vital role in small business growth. 
Staying-ahead-of-the-digital-curve- how-MSMEs-can

MSMEs need to grow along with the new-age technology to sustain themselves and grow in the market.  

Being the backbone of the Indian economy, MSMEs (micro, small, and medium enterprises) generate around 37% of the total GDP of the country. Keeping up in the race for new-age technology to stay ahead in the market is crucial for all MSMEs these days. In fact, making the MSME industry more reliant on the internet and more inclined towards technology adoption is the only good thing to have come out of this pandemic.  

Adopting technology in small and medium businesses is as important as adopting it in larger-sized ones. Technology not only provides the right interface and ease of doing business but also saves time, manpower, and cost to the company, while also helping in network building. Businesses need technological support to keep their work up to date. This is how technology is playing a vital role in small business growth. 

Why is technology important? 

  • Technology provides a network for work not only within the firm but also with other firms in the industry and with other industries too.  
  • It is also used for the internal management of the company and its employees. 
  • E-commerce has emerged as a boost for micro and small-scale businesses these days. Small entrepreneurs find it easier to sell their products through e-vendors, rather than selling them offline.  
  • Advertisement has become free and more engaging for the target audience/consumers. Every small business owner goes online to advertise themselves through their social media platforms like Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn.  
  • Cloud solutions technology has been helping businesses all across the world to maintain their business structures for a very long time now. Cloud provides security, storage, applications, data management and many other IT related benefits to a company.  

How does technology improve business? 

  • Efficiency improvement: With the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in their business models, companies can better use technology. AI-driven software helps to store and memorize all the important data of their transactions, their employee’s details, their business ideas, their future roadmaps, their growth records and more.  
  • Improves security:  Often the bane of technology is cybercrime. Cloud services provide the strongest security to companies and help them to sustain in the market for the long term with all their data intact.  
  • Communication is the key: During tough times like the pandemic when the entire world was bound to stay at home, technology emerged as a savior and enabled billions of business owners to communicate and work from their homes. Communication software like Facebook and WhatsApp were already there but software like Zoom, Skype, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams and many others came to the fore and became indispensable for the day to day running of their businesses.  
  • Fosters a better employee-employer relationship: To run a business better, the employee-employer relationship needs to be healthy. And to maintain that, technology came into the picture with a plethora of software for providing daily assessments and data tracks of the employees and their employers.  
  • Improves knowledge: Technology provides an infinite pool of experience and valuable information. Conducting research is not possible in these times without technology. Apart from that, technology enables you to keep an eye on your competitors as it keeps you aware of their next move and also allows you to keep yourself up to date with the latest market trends. 
  • Aids in business expansion: With the use of new-age technology and its latest advancements, companies can expand their portfolios and their sizes according to the needs of their consumers. Technology helps in assessing the need and demand trends amongst the consumers.  
  • Enhances capacity: Technology allows businesses to reach more customers in less time. It means that more customers have been served than before and that’s how it educates the business owners to know more about their customers. Therefore, the communication and information storage capacity of businesses greatly increases due to technology. 
  • Enables the exploration of new markets for growth: Businesses can explore lots of new markets to expand their services and enhance their profitability. Moreover, technology is continuously getting better with the introduction of increasingly complex and innovative gadgets in the market every other day. And companies can take advantage of these gadgets to keep track of the market and to further increase their growth.  

However, there is still some time before the technology can make deep inroads into the rural business spaces. Rural business models in India are not yet fully exposed to new-age technology, as most of them still use feature phones and are not educated enough to deal with the latest technology. Nevertheless, the situation might change soon, as the RBI governor has launched a UPI for feature phones along with a helpline.