Who can blame us? The past two years have truly been ravaging and damaging.
And across the world, not many have felt that more than small and medium enterprises, or SMEs.
Limited financial reserves, thin margins of profit, often-inadequately-skilled manpower and slow digital migration have made SMEs especially susceptible to the COVID-19 pandemic that has ripped apart their business model and growth plans throughout 2020 and 2021.
But as they say, whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. If the COVID-19 pandemic and great economic slowdown have taught SMEs one thing, it’s that crisis-proofing your business is vital.
There’s definitely no guarantee that COVID-19 will turn endemic anytime soon, and with the emergence of Omicron, that lockdowns won’t be repeated this year.
COVID-19 has highlighted that digitalizing your business is that crucial first step towards crisis-proofing it.
But for many small business owners, digitalizing your business is a catchy buzzword that’s easier said than done. High costs, sudden and rapid transformations, upskilling and reskilling your workforce, and the need to acquire expensive IT equipment have all been major stumbling blocks for small business owners to fully embrace digitalization.
But a 1,000 mile journey begins with a single step. It’s all about finding a way to solve your business day-to-day challenges, or what I’d like to call “pain points”.
Here are some common questions and “pain points” that small business owners have in digitalizing their business, and how we think they can get around them simply, quickly and effectively.
Pain point 1:
My business is offline, how do I grow my business online? I’ve heard of digital marketing but as a small shop owner, I don’t even know how to advertise online effectively.
Solution:
What you need is an easy-to-use platform for you to quickly start (and scale) your business.
With the plethora of choices today that can seem overwhelming and confusing, make sure you get a digital marketing service that allows you to identify the right audience, reach more customers effectively, and drive online traffic to your online store as well as channeling them to your physical store.
The Digital Marketing Starter Kit by Maxis Business not only allows you to do all that, it also enables you to create effective ads in less than 1 minute, drive online customers to your physical stores by offering digital vouchers, send automated and personalized SMS or emails to your customers, and even upskill your team with workshops and trainings on e-commerce and digital marketing.
It’s your one-stop digital transformation kit with all the effectiveness, and none of the headache.
Click here to find out how you can take your business to the next level, without even leaving the comfort of your living room.
Pain point 2:
Digitalizing is complicated because you have to do so many things! You need to create a digital ecosystem for your business – build a website, perform data analytics to target customers, engage customers online, and optimize everything around the clock to ensure the difficult transformation is even worth it in the first place.
Solution:
As a business owner, you are at your best when you multitask and get multiple things done at once. Although all the above sounds like many different things, you can actually monitor and execute them simultaneously.
Imagine a single online dashboard which allows you to do all this at once:
- Building a Google search-optimized website with a mobile-first design
- Creating an integrated chat box to engage with customers real-time on any questions or complaints they have about your product
- Effectively managing multiple stores – online and offline – with a real-time view of sales and inventory through cloud technology
- Using analytics to amplify your online presence, acquire new customers, as well as drive revenue and digital marketing through intelligent data-based decision making
It’s best to have a bird’s eye view when you are captain of the ship. This will enable you to not make the big decisions blind, but being able to do it intelligently, based on data and real-time performance analytics.
Here’s how the Maxis Business eCommerce Retail & Marketing Solutions can help.
Pain point 3:
I’m in the food business. When the trend of ordering food digitally increases during the pandemic, I struggle to keep up with them, let alone track my orders and my payment collections. Sure, I can use delivery platforms, but they charge high commissions. Even when I increase my prices, they raise their delivery commissions even more! As a small restaurant owner with limited staff, this is not sustainable for me.
Solution:
In today’s world, it is absolutely important to enable your customers to order food (and pay for it) digitally. There’s no way to get around this if you want to stay relevant.
So the solution here is simple: cut out the middle man.
Take your business to your customers directly. Worry no more about having to pay commissions.
Sounds too good to be true? With Maxis Business Cloud POS Lite, it’s as easy as can be.
As a small restaurant owner, operate at the same efficiency as a big nationwide franchise:
- Manage online sales on a single platform integrated with payment and delivery partners
- Handle customer requests directly and create a more convenient experience for customers and business operators
- Integrate with online payment gateways and delivery partners fully and get FREE access to monthly online trainings & e-learning portals
- Just pay a monthly or lifetime fee for unlimited access - zero transaction fees and zero fees for online orders!
All this from only RM2 per day, and you can reach more customers, drive more sales, and take your F&B business online swiftly and effectively!
Click here to find out more.
Pain point 4:
Digitalizing is especially difficult for me because I run a delivery and logistics company. When our vehicles are transporting, it’s difficult to keep track of their exact location if there’s an accident. It’s also hard for me to track the vehicles’ whereabouts when they have deviated from the approved route. And don’t even get me started on tracking fuel efficiency or vehicle idleness, how do I even do that?
Solution:
Monumental tasks indeed. But what if I tell you that all you need is a computer mouse?
Get full visibility of your delivery fleet’s real-time location and more, with Maxis Business mDrive.
In a single digital dashboard, you can:
- Plan and optimize routes to reduce fuel wastage
- Monitor both vehicle usage and driver performance
- Improve your journey performance and safety by setting alerts and monitoring driver behavior
- Monitor vehicle health and condition to identify breakdowns even before it happens
This is just some of too many to list here, from the ability to view your delivery vehicle’s location instantly, to viewing comprehensive trip history, to setting a geographical boundary to ensure your vehicle doesn’t veer off course! Click here to view the full suite of what Maxis Business mDrive can do to help your business achieve maximum efficiency and profits.
Act now
The pandemic has taught us that fortune favors not just the bold, but the quick. There’s no telling when the next crisis will hit, and so it’s crucial for you as a small business owner to take steps now to ensure that your business not only survives, but thrives.
Sign up now at https://business.maxis.com.my/en/campaign/smegrant/ and save up to RM5,000 with the SME Digitalisation Grant. Not only that, Maxis Business will help you to apply for it!
Easing your business’ digital transformation journey can be easy and seamless. So why wait? Contact us now!
