As key reforms begin to change India’s economic landscape, the opportunity ahead for micro, small, medium Midsize Businesses and enterprises (MSMEs) are limitless. The region’s GDP growth soared by 20.1% during the first quarter (ending June 30, 2021) and is expected to continue expanding at a brisk pace in the next few quarters.
With approximately 6.3 crore MSMEs currently contributing to approximately 29% towards India’s GDP through national and international trade, this robust growth is welcome news after last year’s contraction of 24.4%. However, this level of success cannot last forever.
MSMEs must capitalise on today’s red-hot economy to rebuild their operations for sustained resiliency like any other company. But equally important, according to IDC, is their ability to anticipate risks and initiate change while avoiding adverse consequences along the way.
Finding the Way to Business Success
One of the biggest challenges facing MSMEs is increasing production capacity or expanding market reach to satisfy worldwide demand. But investing more money in existing facilities and building new ones is not enough. Companies should also plan their future digital strategies – whether gradually migrating their existing IT landscape to the cloud or immediately adopting new forms of digitalisation.
For organisations that have never fully embraced technology, this moment is a critical differentiator as they enter the national and world stages.
A growing number of MSMEs already recognise the importance of an intelligent, data-driven platform to enable speed, innovation, and increased efficiency in every aspect of the midsize businesses.
For example, WayCool Foods quickly shifted from one-on-one, face-to-face meetings with customers, partners, and other stakeholders by using collaboration and self-service tools that help ensure continuous communication and order-taking in various languages. Chitale Group, on the other hand, accelerated its digital adoption plans to make daily work more efficient by automating simple activities, such as transferring money. And General Atlantic, which was already underway in its digital transformation before the pandemic, maintained 24×7 continuity and growth.
While such success stories can be exciting, this is not where the impact of digitalisation ends. IDC revealed that 28% of surveyed midsize companies plan to deploy artificial intelligence (AI) within their business applications to automate processes.
Such digital determination is important for MSMEs when you consider half of them lost revenue in 2020. By transforming operations with the cloud, AI, and other intelligent technology, companies decrease their chances of experiencing further loss by as much as 10%.
Building Agility with Experience and Guidance
SAP helps MSMEs optimize the advantages of the cloud to drive business agility. For example, our Dare2Dream Awards and Mentors of Global Bharat programme empower Indian MSMEs to nurture self-actualised professional and personal success. Organisations can develop business agility by observing and learning from businesses that share their challenges, demonstrating new ideas, and proving new possibilities. Over time, they gain a level of resilience that enables them to proactively fend off risks and disruption better than their competition.
Ready to renew your sense of resilience? Read the IDC paper, “Business Reimagined: Driving Greater Efficiency and Resiliency,” sponsored by SAP.
Source: Forbes
