Little investment, lack of knowledge in technology and low implementation of digital tools put this sector of the national economy at a disadvantage
Technological deficiencies put household microenterprises at a disadvantage compared to their competitors, at a time when reinvention and new strategies are key to the country’s economic reactivation process.
And it is that only 19.2% of the micro-enterprises that carry out their economic activities from home have their own access to the Internet, that is, they do not share it with other family members.
On the other hand, barely 2.5% of these businesses, many of them dedicated to electronic commerce, have a website to promote their products, according to the National Survey of Household Microenterprises carried out last year by the National Institute of Statistics and Censuses (INEC).
This puts microentrepreneurs who do not have the necessary digital tools to boost their businesses in a difficult situation.
“We see for example the case of websites. If an SME whose business is the sale of products does not have an Internet platform to generate the sale of its products, there are lots of foreign online stores that will be absorbing their customers,” said Adrián Morazán, an expert in digitalization of micro-enterprises at Digital Symmetry.
Likewise, many of these businesses assume that relying on social networks as a means of making sales is sufficient to achieve their commercial objectives, however, these should be seen only as dissemination channels, but not to carry out transactions with clients, as they do not have the technologies of an Internet page for such purposes, added the expert.
Jazmín Hernández, owner of Chazak, a microenterprise dedicated to the production and sale of women’s accessories based on recycled materials, is part of the statistics revealed by the INEC, and has her reasons to justify it.
“As a micro-entrepreneur who works from home, and taking into account the cost issue, it would not be feasible for me to contract another Internet provider just for my business, since the bandwidth that I have contracted perfectly supplies my network needs both for my activity to share it with my daughter who also uses it”, clarified the entrepreneur.
In addition, although you accept that you would like to have your own website to develop an online store, the budget issue may be an impediment to acquiring this type of resource.
Pilar Ramos, coordinator of the INEC Information Services and Statistical Dissemination Area, explained that during the survey the institution was able to verify that the number of people who have micro-businesses in charge and who prefer to use mobile data over wired Internet is considerable, which it also explains the result of the study on the subject of connectivity .
Although the survey was carried out throughout the national territory, the greatest weight of the results lies in the information collected in the Greater Metropolitan Area, according to Acuña.
TECHNOLOGICAL REALITY OF MICROENTERPRISES IN HOUSEHOLDS
Micro-entrepreneurs on the tightrope due to poor implementation of digital tools
- 83.9% have computer equipment
- 19.2% have Internet access (exclusively for their business, not shared with the household)
- 2.5% run a proprietary website