[Part 1] Microsoft Malaysia SME Forum: Leveraging Modern Technology to Drive Business Growth

[Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Music] [Music] the future of malaysia's inclusive growth is digital malaysia's digital economy presents exciting opportunities for every malaysian to thrive and succeed microsoft arrived here almost 30 years ago greeted by the nation's promising potential together with malaysia we aim to help harness that potential as our country progress further on its journey to become a regional leader in the digital economy we're working in close partnership with the rat yacht business and government to help drive malaysia's inclusive responsible and sustainable development to advance malaysia's digital economy and innovation we're building and enabling digital infrastructure with our first microsoft data center region in malaysia [Music] this will drive new socio-economic opportunities in the country to further boost malaysia's growth we're empowering digital workforce and ensuring digital inclusion including a commitment to skill one million malaysians by the end of 2023 our commitment to malaysia is grounded on our mission to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more as malaysia takes its next digital leap forward together we stand with malaysia [Music] hello and a very good morning everyone welcome to the microsoft sme forum part one leveraging modern technology to drive business growth my name is julie woon and i'm absolutely delighted to be your host this morning this webinar is brought to you by star media group in partnership with microsoft whether you are attending this webinar on microsoft teams facebook youtube or linkedin thank you very much for taking the time to join us here today i hope all of you are keeping well and safe and feel free to chat with us and let us know your thoughts throughout today's webinar you can type your questions or comments in the chat box or in the comment section at this webinar you will learn how companies are leveraging the right technologies not just to sustain their businesses but to navigate the challenges brought by the pandemic to surface even stronger than before all right with that ladies and gentlemen i hope that you're all eager to kickstart today's webinar before we begin allow me to share with you a few quick reminders please be patient if you experience any technical or internet glitches during this webinar if the session is disconnected abruptly at any point in time please hang on tight as the show will go on and we will definitely be right back in just a short while if you need any assistance from us please check with us or you could also email us at events at the start dot com dot my if you have any questions on your organizational challenges or business concerns please post it in the chat box or the comment section we will try to address all of your questions if you are on the microsoft teams platform feel free to turn on live captions for this event if you wish now allow me to go through today's agenda with you we have with us today tan xiu hun the smb sales manager from microsoft malaysia who will kickstart the webinar with the welcome remarks followed by an overview of the solutions that microsoft has to offer for smbs and smes after which we have an exciting fireside chat with business thought leaders on how you can leverage the right technology for successful business continuity joining us on the panel today are rizal naini chief executive officer sme corp malaysia gmt managing director lala move rooster anwar i.t director my eg part 2 of our webinar will be happening tomorrow where we will be sharing some solutions that are available to help your companies take the digital transformation step to be more productive more secure and more relevant in this current landscape that's not all we also have a total of 500 ringgit worth of prizes to be worn for the lucky winners so do stay with us until the end of the webinar to complete the survey form from the star media group with that said let us now welcome tanju hoon smb sales manager at microsoft malaysia to kickstart today's event over to you shuhun thank you julie hello and a very good morning to you my name is and i'm the smb sales manager at microsoft malaysia thank you for taking the time to join us to learn about how you can leverage the power of modern technology to spur long-term business growth resilience and productivity in a safe and secure manner as julie has mentioned we are running a two-part webinar series where we will be sharing the industry overview today and tomorrow we will be covering more on the technologies and solutions available for businesses to move to the next level ever since the implementation of first mco we have seen and experienced firsthand how transformation has taken place across malaysia as more and more businesses adopt technology to succeed in the digital economy we also have witnessed how some businesses have built resilient using technology finding new opportunities to tap into to ensure long-term business continuity our pandemic experience have not only highlighted the importance of technology in increasing productivity but also organization's needs for proper digital integration and transformation moving forward with the right technology the science of a business is no longer a factor that determines success it creates a level playing field allowing even the smallest of the businesses to grow and try successfully we at microsoft have supported the growth of businesses big and small creating value proposition and offerings that are affordable for startups entrepreneurs and micro smes we offer a wide graph of technologies with free trials including smb specific cloud software and hardware designed to help with your day-to-day business management and operation effectively to help sme who are looking to get started right away we have developed an all-in-one offering tailor-made for sme with microsoft 365 for example microsoft 365 does not only feature office applications such as word powerpoint or excel but also includes teams allowing you to seamlessly communicate with employees and co-workers on a safe and secure platform encouraging collaboration via an all-in-one application besides microsoft 365 includes cloud storage with one drive and sharepoint allowing businesses to save their data and documents on secure and private server without needing to invest in building any physical infrastructure this integrated portfolio solution is specifically designed to empower smes to make the move to the cloud and become tech savvy in a simple and cost effective way and we ease also did you know that you can start with an azure free account and free credits is the cloud services that is scalable and the job to leverage readily available enterprise grade apps securely this will help safeguard your data and provide you with a backup and disaster recovery during emergencies the ease of which technology can be implemented into any business means that you no longer need to be an expert in technology to effectively utilize it the key to success is to leverage the right technologies for successful business continuity and with that i wish you a fruitful session ahead thank you thank you suhun now before we move on to the rest of the program let's watch a video of how tim ken ceo of tk calorie turn his business challenges around instantly and became the king of cairns again with microsoft 365 and microsoft power platform hi i'm tim ken and i'm the ceo for tk cannery cineremba hut i inherited the family business from my father he once said to me atari i'll be gone one day and you will have to take over the business if you work hard enough you will be the king of kans my father is gone now and i've become the king of cans like my father said with a lot of help from my supportive wife we transformed my father's humble shoplot into a medium-sized factory in rawang that can can anything canned pineapples can can curry chicken can can lychee can if you can think it we can can it then one day i encountered a new challenge that changed everything running my business from home that's when i heard those words for the first time managing your business from home that can't be easy i knew my wife was right but what choice do i have i'm the king of cannes not the king of cans i tried accessing my work documents did i leave it in the office how to keep track of all your documents i can't imagine keeping track of my staff was impossible hey sam have you submitted your report i don't see it in my inbox can you send it now [Music] so many staff to monitor this can't be possible i tried to plan my day a book for two meetings at the same time how did this happen there's just too many meetings to attend this is so confusing it can't be easy [Music] running a business from home is a challenge there's got to be a way to make it easier but then my wife showed me something that just might work i was intrigued so i started doing more research i found the solution with microsoft 365. in addition i can apply for any digitization grants or loan for smes to help me along the way awesome so i got a hold of a microsoft partner and acquired a microsoft 365 subscription armed with microsoft 365 let's see how much i can accomplish in one day attending meetings from home is now a breeze i can even collaborate and work on business plans in real time with my staff using teams can with teams onedrive and familiar office apps like word powerpoint or excel i can share and collaborate on document edits in real time with my staff more importantly privacy and security controls are built into the platform so i don't have to worry about files being leaked out or shared without permission you can discussions with my staff can happen anytime anywhere even when the surrounding environment is noisy just turn on live caption can keeping track of tasks on hand of my staff is also easier with planner planner allows me to monitor all the action items my team has at one glance on the customer side of things it is even better as now they can see my available time slots and book a business call with me all it takes is less than a minute with bookings and it's done and thanks to powerapps we managed to develop a sales order app that monitors our inventory update pricing check sales order status and load orders for our customers as well now the team can get more done in less time can with my cannery business back on track i'm now back to being the king of can i'm tim ken and if i can run my business smoothly from home with microsoft 365 you can too what an inspiring video indeed what team can experience here is very real and definitely resonates with many of us in this new normal i hope that video gives you the inspiration and motivation to take that leap to grow your businesses further coming up next we will have a fireside chat leveraging the right technology for successful business continuity and this will be more moderated by cynthia um news anchor from astro awani over to you cynthia good morning ladies and gentlemen my name is cynthia and i will be the moderator for the fireside chat economic recovery is underway in malaysia with the relaxation of restrictions and reopening optimal sectors now during the pandemic we saw how rapid digital adoption had helped organizations maintain business continuity and to stay resilient digital without a doubt will continue to be at the heart of the economic recovery but how can companies emerge from the people with the help of digital infrastructure such as cloud and analytics businesses can execute that recovery and come up even stronger than before and joining us today to talk about strategies to recovery and the tools available please welcome rizal nini ceo of sme corp malaysia joining us as well is jainte managing director at la la move and last but not least we have bhushan anwar i.t director

at my eg welcome once again everyone and thank you so much for being here this morning to share your experience and insights now if i may start with understanding the impact of the past one and a half years to businesses i think reason i finally start with you because sme corp is of course the central point of reference for research and data on smes and entrepreneurs how much of a wake-up call result do you think has the pandemic been smes that threats to businesses could come in various directions not just from your competitors thank you cynthia uh a very good morning to all uh before i actually uh give you some of the profile and landscape of smes in malaysia as we know that the crucial role of smes in the economic growth of malaysia is undisputed considering that they make up about 97.2 of the business establishment within about 1.15 million of business entities yes contributing about 38.2 uh to gdp as well as employed 7.25 million people as well as contributing 13.5 percent of the malaysian export in 2020 yeah so the the unprecedented disruption uh from the copic 19 pandemic has actually slowed down the economic growth affected the resilience of entrepreneurs in the industries meaning that they are living in the uh very uncertain times due to the pandemic currently we are as the government we actually take cognizance in terms of the sme sectors it is the most vulnerable affected groups and with 95.3

cynthia they actually experienced a sudden drop in sales during the initial containment period yeah and out of this 44 of the respondents cited that they have declined in sales more than 70 percent and only 1.7 reported an increase in sales and 3.1 reported no significant difference in sales so we can see how significant they are in terms of this pandemic coveted 19 affect their businesses besides the decline in sales the fierce competition based on price factors had made the situation even worse yeah and therefore uh smes had to retrench their workers we need you to reduce their business costs as well as to look into the business slow down yeah so they have to overcome this and we actually did some uh study and from the outcome based uh evolution that we did 27.8 percent of smes had to retrench their workers due to covet 19 yeah so to survive uh stormy uh c's uh currently i mean the businesses smes need to embrace the agility and adapt to new challenges quickly therefore covet 19 pandemic has been a wake-up call for businesses whether it's big or small to embrace digitalization and the new normal uh created by the global pandemic has redefined malaysia's approach towards the economic uh priorities and strategies there and as we know that uh the crisis has brought into a sharp focus the need to build resilient sustainable and inclusive ecosystems for the smes with the technology and the digitalization taking the center stage and we have budget 20.2 uh recently perhaps i can share more later how we can actually look into and address these digitalization gaps for the smes well thank you rizal for giving us an overview of the impact of pandemic towards smes and i think you have rightly underscored just how important this sector is to the malaysian economy uh during the movement restrictions during the lockdown we also saw uh some businesses have really stepped up to keep the country going for instance like platform providers and delivery services and as such i want to move to jain a la la move of course has played a pivotal role as last mile delivery solutions during the pandemic as an essential service chain can you share the kind of technologies that your team has had to leverage to better engage with customers especially coping with surging demands at that time hi first of all good morning to all the panelists as well as cynthia um it's a pleasure to be here um so during uh the pandemic time it was really crucial for us to really step up into the nation i think that um we the the government with the such a long lockdown in malaysia a lot of businesses are no doubt um affected right um we don't just empower users we don't just help users we also empower the sms like uh results this sme is our backbone of the economy so in definitely to cope with this search we had a lot of tech in place um uh first first of all i would like to highlight is that uh we have real-time gps tracking for vehicle so you are able to understand where your parcel is at especially for small businesses when they have ongoing 10 deliveries at the same time they need to make sure that all their customers receive the item and i think this real real time gps tracking is very very helpful to help a business to satisfy i guess our customer needs at that time um aside from that we also have um driver favorite system so once the driver have completed your order you can rate your drivers and as a platform provider it's important to have transparency and as well as improvement of your driver quality so when a driver is being flagged or being done we need to be able to tackle that issue hence we have the transparent rating and review system for our drivers um lastly deciding to cope with the search whenever government announced that there's a lockdown or or there's a slight relaxation uh we do see quite a huge movement uh in terms of our demand as well as our supply so um to cope with our demand we definitely need live chat in place uh we had um chat bots in place um initially the chatbot was not um was was not optimized fully but with the help of ai and constant optimization of the chatbot it's more of a human touch now rather than speaking to a robot i think moving forward as demand grows especially for peak season for all e-commerce um all this tech in place will help to reduce the operational cost and it's just like why lala move exists in the market right we are helping to reduce the barrier of entry for any anyone that would like to start their own business um logistics won't be your headache um because uh it won't be not just a headache it's also additional costs that they have to put in to start their own fleet managing the drivers um i think that with our service they can definitely leverage with with um without um now in the head taking away the headache of logistics um but at the same time they are able to focus on their core portfolio grow their business as well as serving more customers all right thank you for that i think or what you mentioned about lowering the barrier to entry to running a business uh that is so crucial especially now you know that businesses are still facing our cash flow issues and still trying to recover uh from the uh pandemic i like to get to um uh to talk about you know operating in a digital first environment because my g has been doing that uh for over two decades in fact i use my eg a lot i feel like it's definitely a lifesaver by offering online solutions to otherwise you know mundane out-of-date services so richard maybe you can share your experience when the pandemic hit many government services were disrupted my eg of course it bridges government agencies and citizens to the um to the website as i.t director of myeg what kind of digital strategies that you had to undertake to respond to the disruption and at any point did you have to transform any of your products and services thanks india for the question and good morning to all the panelists so um just to answer your question so when the pandemic started our main focus was to ensure that all our staff were taken care of that they were able to work safely and also to ensure that our business operations that the services that we rendered to our customers were not affected so um in order to do that um i think the it department within the company we came together and we internally develop systems that allow our staff to essentially uh update the health status and report whenever they come to the office so interestingly after coming up this system um we found out that it's a viable system we decided to commercialize the system in other countries where we have we had presents such as the philippines and indonesia and also we determined that we had to expand our services into other sectors as well such as health and and travel in a big way such um such as you know offering um my safe travel as a as a portal for travelers to come into malaysia and also my safeq which is a service that allows anybody to actually um book a hotel quarantine if they if they need to so essentially our digital adoption strategy involves having uh internal champions within the iit department that were able to promote the use of remote working tools because essentially traditionally we weren't working remotely most of us are working in the office so we had to have internal champions to be able to do this um apart from you know using microsoft teams we also had an internal chat system which was mainly used by the ip engineering team and what we did was we pushed this this system to be adopted in other departments as well and that allowed them to essentially create public private uh groups quickly securely and also to be able to link discussions to issues and project management tickets that allowed us to better coordinate projects and tasks in a in a fully remote working environment i think in a pandemic situation i think most importantly what we had to do was we had to ensure that our systems continue to be secure so we had to periodically assess our security posture we had to implement mitigation actions to ensure that it's maintained and as our staff started working from home we had to also be proactive by de-risking things like remote access by implementing like multi-factor authentication as well as deploying robust effective endpoint security solutions so in terms of our products and services it didn't really change that much because um it was conceived as a contactless service for on behalf of the government however we do continue to improve our customer service and engagement by implementing you know new platforms uh for for engagement and support which includes our online live chats and automated chatbots so that's a working work in progress and and we continue to as we continue to improve our services to our to our customers thanks for that rishtan it's quite interesting to see that you know myg responded to new needs or new services that people need and to roll it up quickly and that requires the tools right the the readiness especially on the technical and digital fund i think what we gather from all three panelists is that ready or not destruction can happen anytime from anywhere i like to bring this discussion back to result to really understand um what do smes need to survive the pandemic yes going digital is one and now as we move into the recovery phase as economy reopens you sme still see the value of technology as a necessary investment and and yes what digital capabilities should they focus on building for the coming years yeah cynthia uh the digital technologies will take a center stage in the new normal as these technologies can help firms to be i mean better cope with the kind of disruptions that mentioned for example like rapidly shifting consumer demand and confidence operational disruptions uncertainty and redundancies in the workforce as they encountered in the comic 19 lockdown as digitalization continues to gather faith throughout the world it is imperative for malaysian smes to embrace the digital economy to not only ensure that not to be left behind but also to help the inspire the economic growth and as we know e-commerce is a game changer for smes [Music] giving that new opportunities for smes to break away from the limitations of a small market into a global market with billions of customers here and we actually did a survey a sme study in 2018 showing that smes that are using social media and e-commerce in their business operations are seeing productivity improvement uh of between 26 to 27 uh proving that leveraging on the internet for e-commerce will boost the growth of opportunities sales productivity well as wealth creation for smes for the economy as well so under the 12th malaysian plan we actually have these digitalization programs and the digitalization of smes will be undertaken as an important national agenda to transform yeah uh the conventional way of doing business uh to uh to the business that we are doing currently on online a national sms digital digitalization program will also be introduced to drive the adoption of this digitalization and among some of the programs that perhaps i can say here uh for example like the digital uh onboarding for micro businesses digital transformation acceleration program as well as initiative from sme by the name of waruku we also have that platform for our small businesses especially micro enterprises to inculcate perhaps to adopt e-commerce for their day-to-day business and embedding digital technology in business models has proven to be a boon for productivity and sustainability in the long term and this has been particularly evident during a time of crisis like uh calling 19 pandemic yeah and uh to survive in this postpartum world there are three areas or smes i mean they can adopt number one is about digitalization and innovation number two is sustainability and the third one is inclusiveness uh perhaps i can actually share what does it mean by leveraging on innovation and digitalization is that you would like to see uh sms uh to actually adopt this innovation and digitization approach for example like activities in the e-commerce digital payments technique teleworking remote learning video conferencing you can like online health services as well and end-to-end logistics services that are prevalent in today's economy yeah and we can see that the online presence among smes doubled from 35.3

recorded in 2019 these are during the pre uh covet 19 era to 75.8 percent in 2021 uh during the post kovi era so it is very important now for the smes including the micro enterprises to adopt uh digitalization second about sustainability as i mentioned just now is about the principle of sustainability that they need to actually inculcate in their business strategies uh for example like looking into the integration of environmental social and governance which are more or less what we can say is to be esd compliant and last but not least inclusiveness is of often the case uh during the crisis that kovit19 has put the spotlight of those who are economically disadvantaged uh those at the base of the pyramid especially what we call it as the bottom 40 will be involved as well meaning that smes will contribute significantly in terms of job creation as well as income generation that are vital in providing employment and social protection to these disadvantaged groups so inclusive business can help bring innovation and systematic solutions to population economically and socially as well well thank you i think you mentioned a few very interesting points here um number one you mentioned wealth creation uh job creation and the rise of e-commerce i think if uh there is one silver lining for the pandemic it's just we have seen so much acceleration uh adoption and going digital among consumers among businesses and this has created new opportunities in terms of jobs and industries uh one one industry of course uh particularly i want to go to jane right now the la la move it has um the growth has been tremendous i believe compared to first quarter uh 2020 to 2021 uh volume of deliveries for la la move have increased uh five-fold or in fact more if you can share with us uh jane my point to you or my question is you know as we move into recovery and learning to live the pandemic do you still see um growth high growth and do you or do you anticipate a shift demand for delivery services and if so you know what technologies do you foresee adopting to meet changing consumer expectations thank you cynthia so um during the panda i made la la move and malaysia actually tenfold and it was it was sudden uh we didn't really have the time to really strategize um and really uh plan work plan it well we had to we had to because of the the shift in demand was so great we had to you know do whatever it takes uh onboard more drivers um and at the same time there were a lot of smes that started coming to us because we had api integration so what does api integration does for them um basically you don't have to place the other we will connect back the bit the back end and uh whenever your platform gets your your uh shop uh gets uh an order it will be pushed to la la move so i think that is very seamless and with that with um the post lockdown you know uh moving forward how this business would grow i would say that uh demand has definitely still keep up uh even though uh things are more relaxed at the moment um we are also shifting our um our focus to more uh business um rather than our end user i mean of course like b2c is our bread and butter but b2b side i think there's definitely a lot of potential to help empower the smes here in malaysia um especially during this times i think last year was more of a survival no one really had the time to really think about how uh we can scale right in and without incurring more costs so um our proposition uh moving forward is definitely um extending our fee we've been expanding our fleet uh for example the event van lorries we don't do we don't just do bikes anymore we cater to larger parcels uh we also do consignment as well as long-haul deliveries we also have presents in three cities today uh um which is pinang johor and black uh sorry kenai johar and kl so um in industry cities definitely the economy and as well as the job opportunity is i would say especially in johor it's really um the b40 community really suffered because of the borders closure um economy is really bad and like like you say right empowering the b40 as well not just the sme so the b40 side a lot a lot of them really lost their job during the pandemic and it was sudden some of them most of them are great winners they had no choice right but to look for a platform to join uh temporary just to make sure that they have enough income to sustain themselves hence um even even though during the pandemic our orders the tenfold but um in terms of drivers we provided and empowered a lot of v40 to also join us for a quick buck part-time full-time we don't really have a restriction for that so um aside from fleet and service expansion uh moving forward uh we also have bug order delivery but it's festive season right we don't want um any uh b2b to to increase their cost during the festive period just to cater to the higher demand um just like 11 11 so that is coming up right it's definitely definitely a lot of businesses will be riding on this um for this trends wave and to really cause control um scaling without uh scaling without our additional operational cost of opting for gpl so this is definitely something that businesses should consider uh as a temporary solution uh during the peak and uh and as a fixed fleet um for example gucci uh luxury brands right they they are using us for their mid-mile delivery from their warehouse distributing to their retail stores i think retail will slowly start to come back again but i think digital is still the way to go a lot of people are very used to you know price price transparency when you go online you google for an item you just google and you know uh in terms of pricing how much you're willing to pay for it so i think moving forward definitely a lot of expansion can be done especially on our end catering to larger uh larger parcel larger items as well as longer hall long-haul deliveries thanks for that uh jane very exciting on what other movie is doing um you mentioned something about being in a survival mode last year i like to get to wish then what would i be in the coming year and maybe you can share your personal observations on lessons that we have learned during the course of the pandemic and what can be that can be helpful for other businesses as they face the road to recovery so um i think in my opinion companies iit departments should actually just take a step back and and build a clear understanding of which systems which applications require the most intention attention and then prioritize that work so i think there's a lot to do and it is easy to lose focus uh on what's important and what makes the most impacted business and um uh we need to we need to determine that in the beginning from the beginning additionally i think uh new modes of working necessitate a shift in corporate culture so technology for me is just a facilitator by uh sharing best practices through you know internal champions that i mentioned earlier and conducting successful learning and sharing stage sessions i think it departments can assist in driving cultural transformation and i think businesses also need to be agile and then in order to be agile and tech dominated i think employees need to be equipped uh with technological know-how and capabilities so um companies need to keep uh training their employees to ensure that they are up to date with the latest digital digital trends um these things do not necessarily cost a lot of money and in many occasions occasions and from my personal experience they can be acquired for free just reach out to um you know cloud services providers they are happily uh they'll be able to happily assist these companies to be able to do this um for free i want to go back to jane very quickly just to understand the kind of challenges that la laguero had faced uh you elaborated a bit just now and i think more importantly we want to know advice from you to give to other smes in terms of sustaining their business you as we move into another new normal period which is we could be the endemic face so um in in terms of um like moving forward how should we how should we go forward right i think the shift of um consumer behavior is very great um towards online platforms indirectly opens up a new market that consists of new customers so i think there's so much more to explore out there for businesses um and it's for smes to really take advantage and i think moving forward instead of just survival mode they need to think about how to be more cost efficient and also how to take advantage of that to grow their business skill without incurring additional operational costs uh the the next thing like various digital solutions like mentioned right uh is available out there to support the market with different needs um affordability as well as different size of business um for for instance la la move allows pay-per-use delivery so that helps business to reduce their logistical costs while helping them improve their of uh operational efficiency and offering businesses more flexibility in terms of managing their own fleet so something to adopt um if you have not go digital you it literally is really now or never uh i think that it was a education uh was a very good education done to the nation uh even to the older generation during the pandemic you to be online uh pursue stuff online right i think that like just mentioned the shift in consumer behavior is very great and in order for us to code for smes to code um they will have to re-strategize um in terms of their costing and focus more on growth rather than survival right um we have just a couple of minutes left so i want to get your results to really get your your your uh thoughts about are smes ready you know for this new world as we move into the endemic phase and be equipped with the digital tools that they need because we saw that the pandemic yes it helped accelerate digitalization mostly for the front-end business processes like digital marketing and e-commerce but a large majority of smes in malaysia still remain at the basic digitalization stage things like usage of iot you know cloud computing data is still quite uncommon among sms especially micro smes so maybe a result you can share with us about this um digital business adoption why are they still lagging and and how can we help them accelerate digital adoption at a higher or better pace better pace and also at a higher level okay uh thank you cynthia i think why they are still lagging in terms of uh this adoption of digitalization uh actually we did a study as i mentioned earlier in that study we see that when it comes to uh computerization yeah they are there meaning that they they acquired uh gadgets for examples like smartphones uh tablets yeah uh computers laptops yeah and we found out that about 90 from the response that they have all these equipment but when it comes to uh digitalization meaning that adopting uh software's uh systems uh front-end systems and back-end systems they're still lacking uh uh well we found about 20 of the respondents actually say that they are there but the 80 are still not there meaning that the awareness level are still low so we have to actually inculcate the importance of this digitalization uh to the smes out there especially the micro enterprises once i say this because the micro enterprises actually comprise 78.4 of the total smes in malaysia almost 80 percent so we can see from that uh proportion of a percentage uh 80 are still not digitalized so we need to actually uh make a lot of this awareness campaign as well as how to actually adopt and register some of the simple platforms for example like e-commerce as well as the uh the front-end and back-end systems and i would like to say here is that as a responsive government malaysia has therefore placed a special emphasis on the needs of smes into various stimulus packages that has been announced i think there are eight stimulus packages that have been announced together with two budget announcements and about 188.4 billion ringgit has been allocated to assist uh smes in weathering the impact of kobe 19 uh pandemic yeah and out of that number 23 billion ringgit has been dedicated to drive the digital and technological transformation agenda yeah and then under sme co uh uh i mean ourselves we have some other uh initiatives for example like a platform called my assist msme that i would like to share here that there is a platform where smes out there can get business advisory uh and advisors regarding about any single thing including technology adoption and digitalization and uh we also have smea digital platform or program that aim to drive sme further into digitalization by leveraging digital expertise for a more sustainable growth and in this program we provide subject matter expert digital solutions and technical support for businesses to incorporate innovative digital solutions using technology for example like a ai cloud technology and last but not least yeah technology need pitching uh these are different it's not about smes who do the pitching but these the technology providers or developers will do the pitching and share most innovative and cost effective interoperable products and solutions to the smes so i think with all these platforms and programs that we have we can actually assist the smes to have a better awareness and finally they can adopt the digitalization initiative that we have and we also have matching grant programs for them to start their business and start developing uh their digital transformation journey for example like under business accelerator program boomi putra enterprise enhancement program as well as programs such as micro connector for the micro enterprises as well well thank you so much rizal for sharing all the initiatives available and also just give us an idea of digital readiness among sms in malaysia now with that we have come to the end of the fireside chat that's all the time that we have thank you so much rizal jane and rushdan for a great session so much to take away from this conversation but i think the key point here is that copic 19 recovery will be digital and digital transformation is the only way forward and it's never too late to fundamentally change how you operate the business with a wide range of tools that are more accessible more cost-friendly than ever before so thank you so much to our speakers and thank you for tuning in to this buy side chat [Music] thank you cynthia for moderating the session and to all of our panelists for the insightful discussion indeed if you have any questions or comments feel free to type them in the chat box or comment section and we will respond to them as soon as possible before we end i have one final request and that is to share your thoughts with us about this webinar by completing a short survey for the star media group you may scan the qri code as shown on the screen to complete the survey or go to bid dot lee microsoft dash survey your feedback is important for us to keep providing you with better event experiences as promised once you have completed the survey you will be in a running to win a prize we have a total of 500 ringgit worth of prizes up for grabs you will receive a winner's email if your survey completion has been selected as one of the prize draw winners and if you would like to arrange for a follow-up session with a microsoft representative to discuss any of your organizational challenges or business concerns you may indicate in the survey too join us tomorrow for part two of this exciting series of webinars where we will have our partners showcasing how technologies are used to transform businesses if you have not registered for tomorrow's session please scan this qr code to register or you can click on the link in the chat box ladies and gentlemen thank you once again for your participation and for staying with us all the way until the end of the session on behalf of star media group thank you to microsoft malaysia for the collaboration on this webinar we look forward to seeing you tomorrow for part two of this webinar series till then take care and stay safe [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Music] you

2022-06-22 00:08

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