The periods of isolation arranged during the pandemic propelled a transformation in the way work is approached. In Argentina, one of the sectors in which this process generated the greatest changes was that of SMEs.
These organizations found themselves with the immediate need to consolidate their transition to the digital plane. In some cases, organically advanced those businesses that had faced the passage before the crisis.
In others, however, old difficulties arose. Many times, these barriers were linked to the more traditional methods of the culture common to the field.
For the CEO of DataCloud, Diego Malaspina, the local SME market “was not prepared for digital transformation, or saw it as a distant goal, to be developed several years from now.” As he explains, this is why companies “were forced to evolve very quickly” .
In contrast, corporations continue to go through this change with greater elasticity, since “they have had their own innovation area for years” and for this reason “they only had to press the accelerator ,” according to Malaspina.
Although the challenges that SMEs must still take on depend on the segment in which they operate, the example of retail is worth the case. For the CEO of the technology made in Argentina, in addition to large companies, “some SMEs that had already set up their e-commerce proposal were favored.”
Other businesses of a similar scale came out looking for solutions only after the advent of the pandemic. They incorporated resources that they were not used to, such as shopping carts.
The role of the cloud in the digital transition
This is how technology became the key factor to give way to this transformation. The role played by cloud computing service providers, whether public, private or hybrid clouds, was also central.
In this sense, Malaspina points out that “the most important thing for SMEs when facing digital transformation is that the service provider accompanies them” . In addition, he considers the dialogue between the parties to be central, since “the proposal has to be personalized” and “depend on the client’s approach” .
Along these lines, the CEO of DataCloud highlights the value of “searching for flexible solutions” that guide companies in this passage within a context of a changing economy. “The ideal is to set an agenda, a clear and easy path to tackle, with opportunities to scale according to the development of the business itself ,” explains Malaspina.
Another benefit of cloud solutions is that they allow providers to transfer the inconvenience of having to maintain systems and monitor access to operate with workloads. In this way, staff can fully focus on their professional role.
resistors and solutions
Another resistance encountered by SMEs has to do with those entities that had a customer relationship management (CRM) that worked on-premises in their datacenter, that is, in situ. In some cases, these organizations had to find a rummage on their own, trying to approach a Software as a Service (SaaS) solution.
Malaspina explains that, on occasions like this, “from DataCloud a SaaS proposal was set up to provide this service to end customers, which represented a relief for these companies, who took off a weight that they often could not control ” .
Indeed, cloud computing services allow SMEs to be freed “from the worry of a disk breaking, or of carrying out daily maintenance of the infrastructure, which is a huge challenge that we have in the country” , warns the CEO of the Argentine cloud that continues to expand in the region. And he insists: “The key is human resources, training staff, accompanying them throughout the digital passage and in the subsequent stage” .
Among the barriers that SMEs had to overcome is also the attachment to the concept that it is convenient to keep data protected within the business itself, an idea that is not always close to reality. On the subject, Malaspina points out: “In these cases, you have to know that nothing is completely secure, although it is advisable to implement security policies that can permeate the entire company” .
The arrival of telecommuting
The last obstacle that SMEs had to overcome also has to do with the traditional conception of these work environments. The advent of teleworking in the context of the pandemic generated a disruptive change on this front, with increasing flexibility for staff, in contrast to the rigid custom of operating only in person.