Upskilling our MSMEs for the new e-conomy

Not a few have noticed that lately I’ve been talking a great deal about social media and digital technology. I’ve said in many interviews how I believe we are seeing a great shift for our MSMEs, given what some have called the new e-conomy.

At RFM and at Go Negosyo, we have experienced a marked shift ourselves toward the increasing use of social media and digital technology. More and more, we rely on it for our communication campaigns. Even internally, it’s been a great tool in logistically complicated projects. Where coordination and planning used to take months, now we can compress it to weeks, thanks to the speed and immediacy of so many digital tools at our disposal.

I won’t be surprised if it’s the same with MSMEs.

MSMEs can stand to benefit from the opportunities offered by, not just the digital technologies and social media, but also by a fast-rising digital economy.

The Philippines is among the top countries in the ASEAN to experience rapid growth in its digital economy. We have a young, digital-savvy population and a rising middle class. We readily adopt new digital platforms and I can safely say that we’re even ahead of some First World countries in terms of openness and actual adoption of digital technologies.

At our Go Negosyo events and with the small entrepreneurs I talk to, we encounter lots of social media live sellers and online-only sellers. We meet a constant stream of new social media influencers and content creators, each one building on the success of their predecessors.

The 2023 report by Google, Temasek and Bain & Company said that the Philippines’ digital economy could reach $35 billion by 2025. It also forecast a 21 percent growth in the eCommerce sector as it expects the country to attain upper-middle-income status within that time frame.

More recently, the Philippines was cited by a think tank as among the top countries in the ASEAN in terms of use of non-cash payments, marking an increasing use of credit cards and e-wallets for purchases.

We didn’t get here by chance; for years now, the government has been consciously and consistently promoting the use of alternatives to cash. And with President Marcos Jr.’s prioritization of building more digital infrastructure and his appreciation of digital technology as an important element in the country’s economic future, we are looking at exciting times ahead.

Digital technology has broken down barriers for MSMEs. Today they have access to important tools like capital, markets and mentoring, the three essential elements of successful entrepreneurship.

These days, even a small entrepreneur can go and promote his products using only social media. For example, I’ve mentored small entrepreneurs who’ve sold their bagoong, coffee, hair accessories, car repair services, you name it, using only Facebook and TikTok. What they tell me is that what they’ve achieved is certainly within the reach of the ordinary entrepreneur.

Advertising and promotions were previously inaccessible to MSMEs because of the costs involved. Only the big companies had the resources to hire celebrities to endorse products. Today, you have the owners themselves becoming their own endorsers. Where we used to shell out millions in advertising budget to promote a product, today anyone can go online and broadcast their products or services for only the cost of a smartphone and data charges.

It took the pandemic to spur both the sellers and the consumers to try out the digital solutions.

Regrettable though the many lives we lost to Covid, among the positive outcomes was the acceleration of our adoption of e-wallets and online marketplaces.

And now that the benefits of convenience and access are becoming felt, we can only see more and more Filipinos adopting these solutions. We achieved that critical mass that would have taken far longer had there been no compelling reason to adapt.

Our Online Selling Summit this coming Friday, Oct. 4, 2024 will be part of our push to promote digital technology use among MSMEs.

Through presentations and discussions, we aim to fill the existing gaps in information about how MSMEs can use digital technology to their advantage. Through the success stories to be shared by some of the MSMEs we’ve invited, we hope to inspire others to explore the solutions that are now at their fingertips.

We’ve also invited experts from the government and private sector to thresh out possible issues like security and fraud.

And because this summit is specific to MSMEs, we’re emphasizing things like cultivating a positive mindset, generating multiple income streams, online selling using AI and generating relatable content that will help connect with customers. There’s also topics for those who are already into online businesses but who would like to improve their techniques or become more effective in their content creation.

What is certain to be an exciting portion will be a live-selling demonstration, which I’m sure will be both entertaining and informative. I can’t tell you how many small entrepreneurs we’ve had at our events who told us how they got their start by selling on Facebook Live. Some of them were even OFWs who sold goods from their adoptive countries back to the people back home, and likewise sold Pinoy favorites to homesick Filipino OFWs. For many of them, the live selling hustle became their ticket to entrepreneurship, and their eventual homecoming as owners of businesses.

These success stories drive home the fact that we must upskill our MSMEs so they can make the most of this coming wave of opportunities, in the same way that we are upskilling our workforce so they can remain competitive and even command better pay. With change being the constant, we either move up or move aside.