Mannu Singh, Vice-President, Tata Teleservices
Mannu Singh, Vice-President, Tata Teleservices Limited
Digital transformation and smart tech adoption saw a huge upswing over the past one year. Enterprises translated the learnings of the pandemic into actions and stepped up to become more resilient, competent and future-ready. The focus pivoted towards leveraging the benefits of tech advancements and building digital dexterity to stay ahead in the race. From supporting the evolving needs of the workforce in the hybrid or remote work model to achieving operational efficiency with automation, they benefited from tech integration and enhanced scalability and profitability.
SMEs becoming digitally agile
Small and medium enterprises (SMEs), which account for 40 per cent of industrial production and exports, utilised extensive digital tools and processes to improve their business strategies, become innovative, support decision-making, boost productivity and meet rising customer demands. Continuing with their efforts, they are actively turning towards adopting smart tech digital solutions and scaling up their digital presence to gain a competitive edge in the market. SMEs across diverse industry segments are expected to become more tech-savvy and make decisions with a data-driven approach to identify profitable market trends and better service their consumer demands. Also, with increased scalability and flexibility, they are focusing on offering superior and quality products and services at a faster rate with minimum effort in the coming year as well.
Adoption of cloud communication on the rise
Hybrid working models are set to gain more prominence in the coming times due to the rising demand for user flexibility. Organisations will accelerate the adoption of cloud communications to fulfil their collaborative work requirements across geographies. SMEs have become aware of the importance of solid enterprise communication processes for seamless operations, business continuity and growth.
The adoption of cloud communication services witnessed a rise as enterprises looked for cloud solutions, as these are asset-light and available on a pay-as-you-go model, enabling their employees to work from anywhere, any time and on any device, giving them ultra-flexibility. With this, they are creating a viable ecosystem of digital workplaces to make essential tools and applications accessible from remote locations and devices. This makes email, chat messaging, instant sharing of files, video calling and conferencing options, and scheduling of events and meetings easier for better productivity and smoother operations.
AI, ML and data analytics to gain prominence
Emerging new-age technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML) and data analytics registered an increase in popularity and acceptance owing to the huge benefits they brought to enterprises. In addition to enhancing agility, competitiveness and growth prospects, they helped businesses improve their services, products and customer engagement.
For instance, SMEs are using AI-powered tools in customer-servicing chatbots, customer relationship management, real-time customer feedback analysis and other related areas. They have also realised the potential of data analytics for interpreting huge data sets to predict consumer patterns, enhance offerings and improve pricing strategies. With AI and data analytics, SMEs are resolving issues related to supply chain, logistics and risk management. With the growing importance of these new-age technologies, SMEs will continue to accelerate tech adoption for a competitive edge and commercial gains.
Growing importance of data protection, privacy and cybersecurity
As SMEs transform into a digital ecosystem, the generation of huge volumes of consumer data has made it imperative for them to implement steps and systems for data protection. Companies have already started building strategies to secure their workplaces, keep data safe, and become trustworthy and credible in the eyes of investors, partners, authorities and, most importantly, customers. Since they store enormous amounts of customer data, any incident of data breach or cyberattack can put valuable and sensitive data and the company’s reputation at risk. The scope for cyberattacks is huge and has necessitated organisations to adopt a zero-trust policy and safeguard their sensitive data from threats such as phishing and ransomware.
SMEs will continue with their efforts of building a secured workplace to not only counter risks but also stay safe with the evolving nature of complex malware.
Conclusion
SMEs, being one of the key growth engines of the economy, have embarked on the path of resiliency due to aggressive tech adoption. As the economy continues to grow stronger, the responsibilities and contribution of SMEs will increase tremendously. Undoubtedly, smart tech integration in their DNA will support them and also boost their efficiency, productivity and strength to positively influence innovation.
