Top Tips For SMEs: How To Remain Competitive In A Rapidly Evolving Market

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) have always been compelled to find and leverage every opportunity to remain competitive and stay ahead of the curve. Amidst all of the disruption of the past two years, this need has become a business imperative. The pressures of the Covid-19 pandemic, including lockdown and restrictions, meant that many small businesses bore the brunt of the impact, closing their doors for long periods and losing out on revenue. In addition, the shift to remote or hybrid working has often not been easy, particularly with the added pressure of constrained budgets and a rapidly evolving workforce and technology market.

This article looks at some top tips to keep SMEs from losing their competitive edge. Let’s start with the most obvious:

Accelerate digital transformation

A recent World Economic Forum whitepaper found that SMEs are still at a low to moderate level of technological maturity. Less than a quarter (23%) of SMEs noted that the changes brought on by the pandemic had led to the acceleration of their digital transformation goals. However, those that adopt emerging technologies such as AI, and continue moving to cloud-based systems, for example, are seeing a noticeable improvement in productivity and efficiency, thanks to better access to new markets, slicker operations, and reduced overall costs.

While small businesses that are slow to transform their operations digitally are trying to keep CAPEX low in the short term, those that are maturing into digitalization are setting themselves up to be more resilient to ongoing changes in the marketplace, thereby futureproofing their competitive advantage.

The key to this process is cloud technology, which is crucial for responsiveness and agility. With the right technology vendors, technologies, and expertise, small businesses can accelerate their transformation efforts to remain better prepared to navigate whatever lies ahead.

Use the right tools

Employee devices are more than just a means to an end. While SMEs should prioritize open discussions around device expectations with employees, employers must also consider other core devices' functional features like mobility, security, reliability, and connectivity, in addition, to form factors and design. Hybrid working is here to stay, so providing a degree of freedom through end-user devices is vital. SMEs need to invest in lightweight, compact, yet powerful and secure devices.

Another thing to consider is regular device refreshes to ensure employees can enjoy the latest technologies and SMEs can avoid any unwanted disparity between personal and workplace technology.

To future-proof their employee engagement strategy and remain attractive to new and existing talent, it’s vital that SMEs adopt a new model for procuring and provisioning technology, particularly end-user devices, which involves their workforce from the early stages. For smaller businesses, the stakes are high, and one of their most important assets is its people – employees are even more the face and voice behind the business, and their productivity propels an organization forward. In today’s digital era, enabling employees to choose the technology they want to use is one of the most important ways of retaining talent. Indeed, a recent Gensler Workplace Study found that 76% of employees say that having a choice of technology would positively impact their performance, while 60% also said it would likely affect their job satisfaction. Attracting and retaining talent will ultimately give you the edge over your competition.