Technology For Small Businesses: Running a small- to medium-sized business (SMB) can be difficult, but right now is not one of those times. As governments worked to contain the coronavirus disease outbreak and stop the spread of COVID-19, many nations decided to enter various levels of lockdown beginning in early March 2020. Due to the disruption of workforces (layoffs, furloughs, or being forced to work from home), business output stagnated, and stock markets crashed. This led to a severe recession from which the first signs of recovery are only starting to emerge. Your digital transformation agency can increase team productivity and give customers more intuitive, seamless experiences.
Technology For Small Businesses:
The OECD noted in March 2021 that the interaction between vaccine rollout and the emergence of new SARS-CoV-2 variants would play a critical role in the recovery. Global economic activity won’t reach pre-pandemic forecast levels until the beginning of 2022, even under the OECD’s optimistic scenario. The downside scenario and the central projection show that the post-pandemic recovery will take much longer.
SMEs and the economy
The backbone of national economies is small and medium-sized businesses. In the UK, 99.9% of the 6.0 million private companies employ fewer than 250 people, accounting for 60.7% of jobs (16.8 billion annually) and 52.3% of revenue (£2.3 trillion).
According to a study by IDC and Cisco titled “2020 Small Business Digital Transformation: A Snapshot of Eight of the World’s Leading Markets,” the combined GDP of the eight leading markets of Brazil, Canada, Chile, France, Germany, Mexico, the UK, and the US in 2019 was estimated to have been 48 percent, or US$17 trillion, contributed by small businesses. According to the IDC/Cisco report, further digital transformation of small businesses could boost the GDP of these nations by $2.3 trillion by 2024. Leading SMBs, or “Digital Natives,” experienced much higher sales growth than less developed companies, or “Digital Indifferent” companies, by a factor of eight.
COVID-19 challenges for SMBs
The sudden shift in March 2020 from primarily office-based to primarily home-based working posed the largest COVID-19 challenge for companies of all sizes. Remote employment was uncommon before the pandemic. Everyone could work from home during the coronavirus pandemic, getting to know the wonders of VPNs, teleconferencing, and online collaboration software. Naturally, they did without the security of on-site tech support and HR personnel, which heightened concerns like productivity, security, and employee wellbeing.
The emphasis has shifted to a “hybrid” model where places of work will endorse a mix of distant and on-site employees, with employees usually having to spend a little time in the office and some time from home. This is because of more than a year into the disease outbreak and the progressive easing of lockdowns.
Therefore, it is even more crucial for SMBs to get the right personnel to select, implement, and maintain the new tech their staff uses both on, increasingly, at home.
Conclusion
Especially if they have effective disaster supervision and recovery plans, institutions that have already endorsed digitalization and reconfigured their business practices around cloud services, mobility, and predictive analysis should be ahead of the game. However, companies that need to grow quickly after a stagnant or slow start will require all the guidance and assistance they can get. Technology For Small Businesses: Your team’s productivity can increase thanks to your digital transformation agency, and your customers will also benefit from more streamlined, intuitive experiences. A few essential factors apply to various product categories when purchasing technology.
Author name: Steffy Alen