Digitalisation, an ally of SMEs engaged in commerce

Among the measures included in the Digital Spain 2025 Plan, the important role of digitalisation in trade modernisation stands out. This will boost the competitiveness of the commercial sector, especially SMEs and micro-SMEs through digital transformation, with digital platforms and services for commerce and the sector's capacity for innovation.

According to the E-SME 2020 report, the challenge of digitalisation of microenterprises, including those in the commerce sector, is threefold: The integration of solutions that facilitate internal management and the relationship with customers, an adequate Internet presence, and the analysis of the viability of their online sales channel.

During the last decades, and mainly since the Covid-19 pandemic began, companies have become more and more aware of the benefits of technology for their businesses. In many cases it has even turned out to be the "salvation" to maintain their activity since the lockdown started.

Some businesses have enhanced their digital transformation, while others have integrated digitalisation into their business models almost from scratch. As entrepreneurs, we might ask ourselves: How can digitalisation become an ally of our commerce? What can we do?

According to a study on Digitalisation as a lever for SME competitiveness published by the Spanish Chamber of Commerce, "Digitalisation involves relying on new technologies and new ways of working to be more efficient in our efforts and build new models of relationship with customers, suppliers, and partners”, which proposes different steps based on three objectives to improve the overall processes of digitalisation in an SME, including those dedicated to commerce:

1. Improve their productivity by seeking simplicity to be more efficient by following these steps:
   • Promote jobs with a greater mobility component and broadband connection to ensure more efficient work.
   • Incorporate computer applications and online economic management, as well as cloud-based information storage, and the use of smart mobile devices which will help automate process times and reduce errors.
   • Include intelligent and integrated management of multichannel communications (videoconferencing, e-mail, mobile devices, etc.) for more agile communication.

2. Improve sales in the digital era means placing the customer at the centre, both physically and virtually, taking advantage of each interaction to make their experience unique, with the help of these points:

• Incorporate new customer service channels to expand the market through the internet so that the client or potential client can contact us by the means of his choice (web, telephone, chat, etc.), and improve their experience.
• Have a website as an extension of your business and identity in the online world and use digital marketing tools to enhance your visibility, data measurement and lead conversion.
• Add local digitalisation services, devices, points of sale and customer contact such as a website, social networks or e-commerce.
• Include customer insight tools to give greater personalisation to the value proposition to enable better interaction through the data obtained. For example, through email marketing strategies, which will be a source of information and opportunities.

3. Achieve more savings and control of the infrastructure through digitalisation, which allows to optimize the costs of the SME and control the efficient use of products by applying these steps:

• Use IoT (internet of things)-based platforms for reliable and effective device management to exchange information and update data between machines remotely.
• Leverage cloud computing platforms to reduce economic and time costs. Offer low-investment services thanks to their pay-per-use (mail, office automation, management tools, storage capacities, etc.), management tools, as essential element. A fixed and mobile broadband connection will be necessary.

In addition to these steps, it is important to pay attention to other aspects in order to take advantage of digitalisation in commerce effectively:

1. Getting involved in the organisational culture by training your employees in digital competencies and technical skills, depending on their activity.

2. Protect business and customer data by ensuring compliance with the data protection (GDPR) and protect the business from cyber-attacks with cloud backups, mail cleansing applications, corporate network protection and secure employee browsing.

3. Leverage collected data and business information by incorporating business intelligence (BI) and big data technologies.

4. For those businesses that are more advanced, they can incorporate innovation in the digital transformation development model, eventually through cooperation with start-ups, universities and other commerce.