Malaysian businesses urged to accelerate digital transformation
- Shawn Liew
While more SMEs in Malaysia are now moving towards digitalising their business, many are still finding challenges that are hard to overcome, said Malaysia’s Entrepreneur Development and Cooperatives (MEDAC) Minister Datuk Seri Dr Wan Junaidi
He elaborated, “These problems consist of issues such as high cost of digitisation, adaption of technology, providing infrastructure and proper digital usage skills to be implemented in their company’s operations.”
MEDAC, through SME Corp Malaysia, is leading one of the initiatives under the National E-Commerce Strategic Direction Plan (NESR) which aims to accelerate the implementation of e-commerce among entrepreneurs in Malaysia.
From 2016 until May 31, 2020, a total of 322, 834 SMEs have participated in e-commerce, and according to SME Corp Malaysia, SME participation in online business was record as 35.3% in 2019.
READ: SMEs in Malaysia expect long road to recovery
To better adapt to the digital economy, Wan Junaidi advised SMEs to re-engineer their businesses by ensuring that their business strategies, processes and infrastructure are aligned and integrated to support digital transformation.
On MEDAC’s part, it will continue to provide support through courses and programmes on business digitisation to entrepreneurs who are interested to grow their business, or are keen to convert to e-commerce.
As Malaysia businesses continue their recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, ICT will have a big role to play in doubling the growth of SMEs through improvements in efficiency and productivity, as well as expanding the market reach for Malaysian entrepreneurs, Wan Junaidi concluded.
