SMEs must embrace digitalisation as a mindset in today’s digital economy

KUALA LUMPU: Small and medium enterprises ( SMEs) must innovate and embrace digitalisation as a mindset, across all areas, to grab opportunities presented in the digital economy, says SME Corporation Malaysia (SME Corp).

It emphasised that the adoption of digitalisation must be across people, processes, technology and data as this would enable companies to innovate faster and achieve the desired business outcomes.

“Data analytics will be an important element to ensure the availability of high- quality, actionable, trusted, and complete data,” SME Corp told Bernama in an e-mail interview.

It said that companies must also develop a workforce for the future and become agile enough to compete in this Internet- of-Everything era.

Besides, SME Corp said SMEs must integrate information technology and operational technology to improve end-to- end business efficiency.

“They must begin to build a culture of communication, collaboration and coordination between these teams that is strongly supported by company leadership,” it said.

A survey from the agency showed that digitalisation is a growing trend among Malaysian SMEs where 28 per cent participated in online business in the third quarter of 2017 compared with 27.2 per cent in the first quarter of the same year.

“For companies involved in online business, 30 per cent of their sales come from digital channels,” said SME Corp. — Bernama