To help Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) seize new growth opportunities, Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) launched 50 digital solutions. This was announced at the IMDA’s inaugural SMEs Go Digital industry briefing today.
This will help SME businesses to automate and streamline operations, gain deep insights into in store behaviour and improve sales, ease their entry into new markets and several other benefits.
As part of SMEs Go Digital programme, the industry briefing serves as a platform for ICM suppliers to keep abreast of business-sector developments, key technological trends and challenges faced by SMEs.
Releasing a press statement, IMDA said, “The pre-approval process for the proven digital tech solutions aims to raise SMEs’ digital readiness. The criteria centres on functionalities meeting SMEs’ requirements, solutions’ ease of use, pricing affordability and ICM suppliers’ capability and capacity. Moving forward, beyond typical requirements to enhance productivity and drive transformation, digital capabilities such as cybersecurity, data protection, data analytics and inter-operability will be considered in pre-approved solutions, which would better enable SMEs to thrive in the digital economy.”
Speaking on the occasion, Tan Kiat How, Chief Executive of IMDA, observed, “We believe every business needs to be a digital business to remain relevant and thrive in the future economy. As part of SMEs Go Digital programme, IMDA partners the infocomm industry to offer SMEs a list of pre-approved digital solutions that can be readily adopted to meet their business needs. These pre-approved solutions were identified with the help of relevant government agencies, and have been tried and tested by pilot SME users. We encourage SMEs to make full use of these digital solutions in their digitalisation efforts.”
Poon Hong Yuen, Chief Executive, SPRING Singapore, said, “We are pleased to partner IMDA to support SMEs’ adoption of digital tech solutions that will help them capture new business opportunities and improve their productivity. These 50 digital tech solutions will be made available on the Tech Depot at the SME Portal. We encourage SMEs to contact the pre-approved vendors for their expertise in the areas of customer management, data analytics, machine effectiveness and more.”
Digital solutions have greatly helped SMEs to increase their business and penetration in several markets. One such solution that helped local food suppliers to move into the China market is veriHUB, a cloud-based application developed by veriTAG. This one-stop solution offers services from supplier/product registration to shipment and custom clearance. The pre-approved digital solution has enabled SME food supplier, Cheng Yew Heng, to readily export its sugar products to China, by using cloud-based tagging and authentication technology to comply with the country’s food import regulation. Together with the inventory tracking feature and links to the country’s major e-commerce hubs, the company was able to achieve 200% more exports to China due to a faster turnaround in the exporting process.
Jason Lim, Chief Executive Officer of veriTAG, said, “This Industry Briefing is useful to ICM suppliers like us as it allows us to network with other ICM suppliers and perhaps even explore opportunities to collaborate and complement each other to deliver a more holistic digital solution for SMEs.”
For SMEs who are keen to adopt digital solutions, please contact the nearest SME Centres.
For SMEs that require solutions beyond these pre-approved solutions, a SME Digital Tech Hub will be set up towards the later part of the year to provide them with more tailored advice.