SMEs Archives - AfricaBusiness.com

By Garth Rossiter Chief Risk Officer, Lulalend The past year has not held much for the SME sector to celebrate, but I expect 2023 to be a year of growth and recovery. 2022 saw the end of COVID-19-related restrictions but, at the same time, we also experienced some of the worst levels of load shedding ever. It has been a very difficult year for a sector that is widely considered to be the engine driving the SA economy. It is the resilience of SME owners that kept the doors open and the tills ringing. Higher inflation and increasing interest rates also meant that it was becoming increasingly difficult to have any kind of disposable income with which to invest or grow a small business. This year, SMEs struggled to access the lifeblood that keeps them going – cash flow. This will be a dete...

Digital Transformation refers to the overall change of organisational activities aimed at leveraging opportunities created by digital technologies and data. This requires companies to profoundly transform their business models, infrastructure, processes and culture, in order to steer them toward finding new sources of customer value. The use of digital technologies has transformed commerce and how businesses interact with their customers. To adapt to this changing world, organisations must embrace digitisation. “For small businesses just getting started, there’s no value in setting up your business processes and transforming them later. You can futureproof your organisation from the get-go. Thinking, planning and building digitally sets you up to be agile, flexible and ready to grow,” say...

Tag: SMEs

Resilient SMEs will thrive in 2023

The value of digital transformation for SMEs