Microsoft Corp. chief operating
officer Kevin Turner today unveiled an online hub that will give South African
small and mid-sized enterprises (SMEs) access to a range of free products and
services from Microsoft and other partners.
The hub, at southafrica.biz4afrika.com, is specifically
designed to aggregate all the best resources – both IT and non-IT resources –
available to local SMEs. The baseline services offered are free and highly
relevant for South African SMEs looking to bring their business online and
improve their general competitiveness.
The launch offer will provide SMEs
the opportunity to get their businesses online for free for the first year.
This includes a free .co.za domain, a free website, as well as
free email and collaboration tools. The initiative is a collaboration between
Microsoft, mobile operator Vodacom, the National Small Business Chamber (NSBC)
and the Small Business Development Agency (SEDA).
Speaking at the launch in
Johannesburg today, Turner said the opening of the Biz4Afrika hub was a
strategic component of Microsoft’s 4Afrika Initiative announced earlier this
year, when the company committed to bringing one million African SMEs online in
three years’ time.
He also noted that this launch was
the latest step in the company’s heritage of investing and supporting
entrepreneurs across the world.
The launch follows research released
last month by the Boston Consulting Group (BCG), which showed that tech-savvy
SMEs created twice as many new jobs and grew revenues 15 percentage points
faster over the past three years than SMEs using little technology.
“Our objective is to help more SMEs
transition to, and benefit from, modern IT so they can improve their overall
competitiveness,” said Turner. “Our commitments under the 4Afrika banner are
focused on actively engaging in Africa’s economic development, and for SMEs,
this means providing training on how to apply technology to their business and
helping them understand how they can benefit from a broad range of available
devices and services.”
Microsoft South Africa managing
director Mteto Nyati said the research underlined Microsoft’s belief that the
best way of addressing unemployment in South Africa, and Africa, was by
creating small businesses.
“If we can help small companies to
succeed in the first three-five years of their lives, we will help grow job
creation and economic development significantly,” said Nyati. “By doing this,
we’re supporting government’s national priorities of creating jobs, growing
skills and giving people meaningful work, while investing in local communities
to help remove some of the systematic barriers that hold SMEs back.”
The nine categories where assistance
is available are: finance and insurance, accounting, legal, marketing,
administration, business services, business opportunities, technology and
people. The hub will also connect SMEs with existing online commercial
marketplaces through which they can sell their own products or services.
Nyati said that to further support
the development of small enterprise and to help address employability,
Microsoft will also place one IT intern in each of SEDA’s 43 centres across the
country, where they will receive on-the-job-training on technology and other
SME-related issues to become fully-fledged SME business and technology advisors
in needy communities. A further four interns will be trained to handle online
queries.
Speaking at the launch of
Biz4Afrika, Primedia Broadcasting head of communications, and head of Crime
Line, Yusuf Abramjee, said “a lot” hinges on getting South Africa’s
entrepreneurial culture right.
“South Africa is a society of
extremes. A glittering modern consumer culture sits alongside – and just out of
reach of – a society mired in dire poverty. South Africa’s unemployment rate,
at 25% of the workforce, is one of the worst in the world. There is growing
recognition that the job creation outcomes of economic development are not
solely about putting unemployed people to work for a wage, as important as that
is, but about offering those presently excluded a stake in society,” said
Abramjee.
The BCG report revealed that
high-performing SMEs stayed ahead of mainstream IT adoption, riding new waves
of advancement to improve productivity, connecting with new customers and
markets, particularly outside their own region or country, and competing with
much larger players.
An interesting finding was that
technology leaders in emerging markets grew jobs and revenue faster than in
developed markets, and are even quicker than their developed market
counterparts to embrace new tools. Also, women-owned firms are among the most
technically advanced, innovative and successful firms interviewed.
But at the same time, said Turner,
the research revealed a risk, because SMEs’ adoption of IT is decidedly uneven.
“Across the world, many SMEs, and
their customers, don’t have access to modern broadband networks, and many lack
the skills to get the most out of IT. Many SMEs are also still using large
amounts of old and less efficient hardware and software,” he said.
“What we are seeing is that
technology can help level the playing field for groups with historical
disadvantages in business, and we would like to see more SMEs benefit from
technology to help them become strong, local business leaders.”
