The Small Business Institute (SBI), Old Mutual and Vodacom on May 20 held the SBI SME Indaba, with speakers presenting a variety of solutions that aim to address the myriad challenges identified by small, medium-sized and microenterprises (SMMEs).

Old Mutual Corporate SMEs director Nobesuthu Ndlovu outlined the company’s SME Go solution, a digital platform that aims to grow, run and protect SMME businesses.

She explained that the company had always supported SMMEs in some form; however, about four years ago, it undertook a more deliberate approach.

This entailed engaging with SMMEs from different locations, of varying sizes and coming from a multitude of industries to get to the crux of their issues and flesh out a picture of the common challenges they have to contend with.

These pain points include limited access to funding, inefficient business processes, poor financial management, access to new markets, employee management and retention and business disruption protection.

Ndlovu said that, with this understanding, Old Mutual was able to design a solution to address this, with this based on three pillars – grow, run and protect.

The growth pillar aims to help SMMEs access funding, which was identified as a major challenge, as well as provide new market solutions.

The run pillar aims to help SMMEs with their operations, with many pointing out the difficulties encountered here, especially when one person is responsible for several tasks.

The protect pillar aims to ensure the wellbeing of SMMEs' assets and people within the business.

This digital platform aims to help SMMEs automate their finances and business operations, streamline payments, track and manage expenses and provide access to business funding.

Its services constitute financial management, human resources and legal, marketplace, business operations, payments, insurance and funding.

Ndlovu pointed out that the platform was meant to be used “on the go”, as implied by the name and was, therefore, available on mobile devices.

It was targeted at businesses making less than R220-million in yearly turnover and that had less than 250 employees. This broad range was then further segmented into micro, small and medium-sized business, with the platform catering to all of these, Ndlovu explained.

She also indicated that, while it was a digital platform, which aimed to provide technological tools to assist SMMEs, there were humans behind the system who were available to help them grow to profitability.

Ndlovu informed that the platform currently had almost 20 000 registered users, with it being “grown under the radar”, as the company wanted to ensure it was fully ready.

The marketplace service currently employs a business-to-business strategy, allowing these registered users to trade with each other. Ndlovu said the company would be looking to open up this marketplace in due course.

The platform has a subscription-based plan, with the first two months offered for free.

A team from Vodacom highlighted the company’s offerings to support SMMEs, including Vodacom Financial Services.

This constitutes six products, namely, insurance, digital lifestyle services, lending, payment, partnerships and Vodapay. These were developed in response to touch points identified in research and work with SMMEs, with the aim to provide a cost-competitive solution.

Vodapay’s considerable user base was highlighted, with more than 16-million users daily, and the company looking to bolster its footprint in the country further.

SMMEs were encouraged to make use of this and other products.

Google South Africa country director Kabelo Makwane advocated for the use of Google AI to provide a competitive advantage to small businesses.

He pointed out that it had use in analysing consumer behaviour and allowed businesses to stay ahead of consumer demand and allowed for them to hyper-personalise their offerings.

Voice and data solutions provider NGN Group operations executive Bianca Salgado highlighted that the company had the capability and experience to provide tailored solutions for companies to undertake the necessary digitalisation of their businesses.

The company has also partnered to provide a different approach to ensure cybersecurity, given how high risk data is.