Across Asia, economies are reopening, bringing welcome relief to small businesses. But reopening brings new challenges. Businesses will face new safety measures, new work patterns, and new concerns about continuity.
It’s one thing to reopen, but how can businesses stay open and return to growth?
Digital transformation is the way forward
To cope with the financial and operational challenges presented by COVID-19, governments are encouraging businesses to embrace digital transformation.
Singapore’s Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA), for instance, has curated a suite of digital solutions that help small businesses manage continuity and position themselves for growth. This Digital Solutions Directory covers safe reopening solutions such as visitor management, remote work, workforce management, and more. The effort is sustained under IMDA’s SMEs Go Digital programme. [Disclosure: Salesforce is one of the digital solution providers listed in IMDA’s directory.]
“By collaborating with digital solution providers, we aim to help SMEs embrace digital transformation and adapt to the new normal presented by COVID-19. Through adopting digital solutions, SMEs can increase their productivity and competitiveness and emerge stronger as the economy recovers,” said Jane Lim, Assistant Chief Executive of the Sectoral Transformation Group in IMDA.
5 resources to help small businesses transform digitally
Businesses want to reopen and rebuild fast. But as they do, they need to think about the long term. How do they want to grow their business in the future? What tools do they need to get there? Do they and their staff need to learn new skills?
Here are some resources developed to help small businesses work through these questions and position themselves for growth:
1. Small Business Growth Kit
The trail to growth can have lots of twists and turns. The Small Business Growth Kit helps make the trek easier with tips on how to plan a path forward and prepare a sales pitch. There’s also a list of indicators that can help businesses decide when it’s time to invest in new tech.
2. Work.com
Work.com helps businesses reopen safely and efficiently while keeping employees, customers, partners, and communities safe. It includes essential solutions for contract tracing, managing employee wellness data, shift scheduling, and more.
3. Tableau
As the economy recovers, data skills will be in demand. Strong data skills can help businesses make sense of their data and use it to make more informed decisions about customers and employees. Now, small businesses can get a free three month trial of Tableau.
4. Trailhead
As businesses reopen and adapt to the new normal, they will need to upskill employees. Trailhead is where they can learn in-demand tech skills, business skills, and soft skills online. If individuals prefer to learn via video, there’s Trailhead Live. It offers live and on-demand training over video, taught by Salesforce experts.
5. Webinars
Businesses are reopening, but many employees and customers continue to work from home. Since it is a business imperative to stay engaged with employees and customers in this new normal, a customer relationship management (CRM) software is essential. To learn how to get started, on-demand webinars such as My First CRM and My Virtual Test Drive, which cover setting up CRM software to win more customers, are available.
As countries across Asia emerge from lockdown, small businesses will continue to need support as they shift to a new way of working. IMDA’s Digital Solutions Directory can help small businesses overcome the challenges of COVID-19, as can Salesforce’s apps, expertise, and services.
To learn more about how Salesforce can help businesses reopen and get back into the market fast, visit Work.com.
