How SMEs can manage digital disruption using business cash flow software

What is digital disruption, and why should SMEs care?

Digital disruption is a change brought on by new business models and rising technology. Digital disruption can impact the value of existing products and services and entire marketplaces or sectors. Digital disruption consists of four components:

• Technology – the invention, design, development, and usage of the product
• Business – how the product is marketed, priced, and sold
• Industry – involves standards, regulations, and approaches to satisfy the need
• Society – the cultures, mindset, and habits that lead people to adopt new products

SMEs are in danger of being impacted by market-changing economic changes, regulatory restrictions, and digital disruption. 34% of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) say they will go out of business if they don’t come up with new ideas, according to research commissioned by Ricoh. According to Ricoh’s survey, SMEs must be prepared to question prevailing notions of growth, given that 56% are attempting to boost profits, and 54% are expanding their businesses.

How embracing the current digital disruption has become a crucial differentiator?

Given the unpredictability of the economy, SMEs are under pressure to achieve digital transformation while still managing operations. The study identifies three major areas where SMEs should use technology to help them focus their efforts:

• 54% acknowledge the importance of maintaining a relationship with their clients: SMEs must strengthen customer interactions by leveraging technology to facilitate and inform product and service development.
• 74% of business executives claim that technology enhances their capacity for innovation: SMEs must employ more innovative workplace technology to transform processes, boost agility, and increase efficiency.
• 42% want to encourage safe venues for experimenting to discover if ideas are successful: SMEs must help exceptional individuals reach their full potential by utilizing technology to empower staff and stimulate innovative thinking.

How does digital disruption impact treasury?

Many industries are seeing long-standing boundaries blur or disappear entirely due to digitization, connectivity, and collaborative ecosystems. As new business models transform the company, treasury must adjust to the effects on liquidity, funding, and risk management requirements. Treasury leaders will need to reevaluate how they organize and manage treasury functions as more and more financial transactions move to “real-time” to ensure that technology investments properly support increasingly interconnected processes. This includes looking at everything from liquidity management and financial risk mitigation to better preparing for cyber threats.

How to transform a challenge into an opportunity?

According to the survey, although 92% of SMEs acknowledge the impact of digital disruption in their sector, 59% are not yet in a position to take advantage of its benefits. Furthermore, a quarter of SMEs anticipates that businesses will not be able to respond quickly enough to changing government rules in the next two years, and 20% expect that automation will increase.

How can SMEs create value in the face of disruption?

• Companies must recognize emerging opportunities and consider how they may benefit consumers by staying up-to-date on developments.
• The second phase entails reinventing the business model, fully utilizing technology, and giving people the freedom to innovate.
• The focus should be on implementing technology rather than developing it and comprehending treasury processes rather than physically carrying out those activities.
• Recognize how technology helps to execute the tasks given more effectively, and then learn how to use technology to get the intended effects. Recognize that as technology evolves, so will the ideal mix of treasury and technological knowledge.
• Finally, businesses must search for methods to disrupt their market before competitors. Today, firms should analyze data with remarkable accuracy and speed using company cash flow software solutions. They must apply these insights to create a long-term competitive advantage.

Treasury should be willing to learn about these changes and consider how they may use new applications to streamline processes as they happen. Before any major restructure or deployment, treasury must thoroughly understand the solutions they will be working with. Additionally, every staff member needs to adapt to new technologies.

How should the treasury respond to digital disruption?

Leveraging the latest treasury technologies can help manage digital disruption. 

What are the benefits of choosing cash flow software for small businesses to manage digital disruption?

Cash flow software for small businesses can help speed up time-consuming, administrative-heavy tasks and prevent other small business cash flow problems.

Below are a few points why SMEs should use business cash flow software to manage digital disruption:

• Improve cash flow monitoring 
• Optimize decision-making through forecasting
• Enable 360-degree visibility of your cash assets with an intuitive dashboard 
• Increase operational efficiency that drives operational productivity, improving the bottom line, and saving time for strategic tasks
• Increase new market opportunities, revenue generation, and customer insights by using analytics
• Get complete control over all aspects of the business, from real-time performance analysis and decision-making across the organization to offering improved business insights

Schedule a demo to speak to one of our experts to learn more about the power of data & analytics in helping organizations manage digital disruptions.