Navigating the new normal with digital enablers
Small and Medium Businesses (SMBs) are a critical segment of the Indian economy as they contribute nearly a third of the GDP and generate employment for millions. In the past few months, however, this segment of enterprises has been among the hardest hit by the economic crisis, triggered by the pandemic. Ensuring business continuity has been a critical challenge, especially for traditional SMBs in mini-metros and smaller towns. Nevertheless, faster adoption of digital technologies is helping SMBs to become resilient in the face of the ongoing adversity.
To gain insights on how digitally enabled SMBs were better equipped to maintain business continuity during the lockdowns and to garner insights on the best way forward for this crucial segment of the economy, Forbes India launched a tweetathon in association with Microsoft India, themed ‘Building Business Resilience for a Digital Future’, on September 30, between 5pm and 6pm.
The discussion was held completely on the Twitter platform, with the participants sharing their views on issues raised and moderated by the Forbes India team. The participants, including Suhail Zaidi, Head at CII Centre for Digital Transformation; Praveen Bhadada, Partner & Global Practice Head - Digital Transformation, Zinnov; Harish Vellat, SMB Corporate Business Leader, Microsoft; Prashanth Subramanian, Co-Founder, Quadrasystems.net and Prabhu Dhamodharan, Convenor, Indian Texpreneurs Federation, shared their perceptions on various themes related to SMBs and the impetus these enterprises receive from digitalization.
Technology for Business Continuity and Growth
There was a clear consensus that companies who had robust digital systems in place were able to ensure business continuity and recover quickly. As virtual collaboration became a necessity to maintain business continuity, those companies with a strong technology backbone were able to stay afloat by staying connected with their supplier and distributor networks, employees and customers during the lockdown.
Those SMBs with access to analytics were on a stronger footing as they were able to monitor changing customer preferences, based on which they could undertake important strategic decisions. Even before the crisis struck, companies with foresight had begun leveraging the huge volumes of data that they were generating, using emerging data analytics technology to forecast sales and facilitate cross-selling, designing, manufacturing, and business segmentation.