Smaller companies should embrace new technology such as big data and analytics to stay ahead of the curve and be competitive.

Fusionex International new technology managing director Isaac Jacob pointed out that small and medium enterprises (SMEs) have inherent strengths they can lean on to keep up with the times.

While large enterprises have certain advantages, SMEs should play to their strengths instead of competing head-on with the big boys.

“For large enterprises, they can leverage their brand, track record and strong clientele base, so at the onset, customers have higher confidence levels with them and want to work with them.

“But at the same time, they are a bit clumsier and slower in making decisions. They also have fewer personal touchpoints with the customers, as compared with SMEs that are more personal and understand their customers better. SMEs are also more agile,” he said.

Jacob, whose role in Fusionex covers new technology such as artificial intelligence and big data analytics, has been in the data intelligence and enterprise report­ing industry for about 18 years.

The industry veteran will be speaking on reinventing business models with data at the SME Thought Leadership 2019 forum tomorrow.

Key highlights of his presentation include how SMEs can leverage and use the data that they already have, and combine that with data that they can potentially access, in order to make better judgement calls and access better markets.

“With that, I think they are in full position to leverage on whatever data sets they have, large or small.

“Big data is not just about large data sets but diversified data sets, so as long as they have a certain amount of data sets, they can leverage that to carve out better personalised services and reward their customers better,” said Jacob.

The first forum in the SME Thought Leadership 2019 series, the half-day (8am to 2pm) event titled “Discover New Business Opportunities Through Big Data” will focus on leveraging big data and analytics to enable SMEs to take their businesses to the next level. It will take place at Menara Star in Petaling Jaya tomorrow.

The SME Thought Leadership 2019 series is organised by Star Media Group and presented by CIMB Bank Bhd.

Source: The Star