Malaysian SMEs need to take the digital leap

The Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation (MDEC) calls on all Malaysian small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to boost their digital transformation to the next level with the SME Digital Accelerator programme.

The programme aims to provide participating SMEs a structured, step-by-step approach to embrace digitalisation and help them solve their business pain-points in today’s increasingly disruptive technology-driven economy. Hence, they will become more competitive, reduce business operation costs, improve operational efficiencies, and increase overall revenues.

Malaysia’s SMEs are the backbone of the national economy. As of June 2020, the sector contributed 40% to Malaysia’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and employed over half of the country’s workforce. Due to their pivotal role, the effective digitalisation of Malaysia’s SMEs could add some USD24 billion the country’s economy by 2024.

In a statement, Surina Shukri, CEO of MDEC said, going digital is the need of the hour for Malaysia’s SMEs, as they now must accelerate their transformation to remain competitive in today’s environment and to tap into new opportunities in the next normal.

“Through the SME Digital Accelerator, we offer SMEs a structured approach to implement the right digital solutions that can help transform their business in terms of their people, processes and – above all – mindset. Through the programme, we hope to further catalyse the digital transformation of our enterprise sector to sustainably benefit from the shared prosperity which our economy is moving towards,” Surina said.

In a SME Digitalisation Survey conducted by MDEC with its state partners earlier this year, it was found that over 90 per cent of the SMEs surveyed are conscious that digital solutions can increase productivity, generate more sales and improve process efficiency, all of which could lead to reductions in operational cost.

However, many respondents also found digital adoption challenging; 60% stated they find it too costly to invest in and maintain digital solutions, while just over 40% cited having no knowledge and skills in digital tools
as a hindrance.

The three-month programme will be conducted in five phases – comprising the identification of pain-points or opportunities for SMEs in the digital space in relation to their businesses, implementation of suitable digital solutions, achievement of adoption benefits based on before and after results as well as tracking and monitoring the SMEs progress for impact assessment.

“Today, many SMEs want to go digital but have challenges, such as the lack of knowledge and skills to use digital tools. More so, the high costs involved. With the support of our partners who can provide easy access to our local various digitalisation ecosystems and processes, the SME Digital Accelerator will provide a step-by-step approach to ensure effective digitalisation of our SMEs with tangible results – especially as we have seen SMEs increasing their productivity by 30% after having adopted a structured approach towards their digital transformation,” added Muhundhan Kamarapullai, Director, Business Digital Adoption, MDEC.

The SME Digital Accelerator is one of the latest efforts under MDEC’s ongoing 100 Go Digital initiative. Launched in 2019, this platform has enabled smaller and more traditional Malaysian enterprises in key business sectors to digitalise.