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How SME overcame the challenges of COVID-19?

 

The COVID-19 pandemic has cause global health emergencies, and a global economic slowdown. Trade, investment, and employment are all been affected, and the crisis will have an impact on economy. The development of COVID-19 outbreaks affects various sectors with a scale of loss that tend to be very broad and in different sector. The sectors most affected are trade, tourism, transportation, education, and health. Small and Medium Enterprise (SME) are the most threatened group of entity because they may not have the resources to survive the crisis.

 

 

The first challenges that SME facing is their sales without any doubt. Many businesses were forced to shut down during this pandemic after the government-imposed MCO / Circuit-Breaker restrictions and lockdown.  For businesses that were able to operate or re-emerge today, many are facing significant challenges complying with the requirements ordered by the government and health authorities. Moreover, the physical store’s sales might significantly drop too due to majority of consumer is afraid to go outside. 

Secondly, SME is also facing issue of financial. Financial issues included cash flow, postpone in receivables, and declines in revenue.  Many SME owners are battling to make payments to creditors on time and in addition having to support the on-going operational expenses such as salaries, bills and rent. Most SME owners knows they should have saved funds for emergencies, but they did not expect these dire circumstances to last for months with no end in sight.

The third challenges that SME would face is their supply chain. Many SMEs are also facing delay in receive goods from their supplier. It was due to many industries have stop working, reduction of workforce and worker falling ill during this pandemic, hence leads to delay in delivery of products. In the long term, supply chain disruption will affect global economic negatively. And consumer demand reduction will also aggravate the situation.

Fortunately, there are always more solution than the problem. To beat these challenges, changes are needed to be made. SME may start considering adopt digitalization and implement e-commerce in their business to overcome drop of sales. The online market is huge, SME should take advantage of social media platforms in order to do marketing and branding, extend their customer volume in the long run. For financial issues, SME may apply loan from bank to overcome the cash flow and liquidity problem. SME should also improve their risk management skill and always forecast cash flow continuously. And proactively plan for reserving cash for emergency use in future. Last but not least, SME should always engage with supplier closely with supply chain issue. And SME may ask for discount while payment and order are delayed by supplier. This will help to cut cost and increase cash flow.

SME should take this chance to review their business model and see if their business are suitable and ready for the new normal. SME need to find out new market and introduce suitable products or services to emerge from new normal. Lastly, SME should also implement high level of occupational health and safety standards. The pandemic will be over only if we fight together.

 

 

IT Support, IT Company, IT Services Win-Pro Singapore

IT Support, IT Company, IT Services Win-Pro Malaysia

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