(MENAFN- The Peninsula) Doha: Entrepreneurs were urged to embrace the digital Economy and realign their supply chains towards sustainable businesses at a panel discussion during Rowad Qatar 2021. Over the past years Qatar has been investing in local supply chain and manufacturers to ensure the country's self-sufficiency, an official said.
Qatar Development bank (QDB) hosted the panel discussion entitled 'Market Penetration: Reorienting for Growth Opportunities in a Post-Pandemic Economy' which shed light on rapidly changing business environment for entrepreneurs and Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs).
Saleh Al Khulaifi, Acting Undersecretary for Trade Affairs at Minister of Commerce and Industry (MoCI), said“Many Qatari companies have branches out of Doha, they are collaborating and exporting their products and services and SMEs are already supplying their products to other big companies abroad and working with large international companies like Google, Microsoft here in Doha.”
“During the pandemic we had a deal with Google and Microsoft to provide their services to SMEs and local companies. The pandemic was a great accelerator to this digital adoption and the quick partnerships with data service providers to provide services and get connected which is the big advantage of having these multinationals in Qatar,” he added.
He said,“Entrepreneurs need to embrace the digital economy and supply chain is important when it comes to sustainability of businesses. Over the past years we have been investing in our local supply chain and manufacturers to ensure that whenever a disruption happens we will be able to supply ourselves and we have also supplied to GCC, Europe, and China.”
Speaking about how regulators and policy makers can facilitate SMEs growth in today's constantly evolving business environment, Al Khulaifi said“We have been trying to join hands with global players and large corporates to come up with solutions such as sandboxes, incubators, accelerators to have a safe place where entrepreneurs and innovators can come under a controlled environment. We are not only supporting our young innovators by tailor-made solutions but also helping companies either in the fintech and e-commerce space to face challenges.”
Laurie Becquar, Head of Retail & Private Holdings at Google Cloud, said“Automation plays important role in achieving scalability and gaining a competitive edge in the marketplace.” She highlighted that smaller organisations and SMEs are less likely to adopt automation but on the flip side once they adopt it and take on that journey to automate their processes, they are more successful than large enterprises as large companies have large IT and technology set up which makes their move to automation slower and complex.
She also noted that the new focus and shift is towards cloud computing storage.“For entrepreneurs and new businesses, cloud computing brings the ability to start small and scale to any size. You may be able to bring your services and products globally at scale very quickly if you are setup on cloud because it gives you huge scalability and elasticity depending on your services. This technology also gives you unprecedented security as you are relying on a very robust infrastructure,” she said.
She added“Through the smart use of data and analytics SMEs can enhance their abilities to capture and leverage market penetration opportunities. As Google this is the core of what we do, to make sense of data and to bring business values.
Francesco Betti, Head of Shaping the Future of Advanced Manufacturing and Value Chains at the World Economic Forum said“We saw with COVID-19 massive shift to digitalisation. To drive companies in the manufacturing and operation space we need to develop new digital capabilities and rethink our supply chain strategies and look at new ways to build resilience. The most successful companies are those who are investing in technology and people.”
“In coming years, the main capabilities of the companies need to be adaptability and if we look at the future outlook, crisis will be happening more often with deeper consequences for which we need to be fast and back to digital which is an amazing tool to build resiliency, flexibility and agility,” he added.
Marc Penzel, Founder & President of Startup Genome said,“In today's transformational times we need to expand on the trends that are taking place as we see huge global potential for entrepreneurs and technology is disrupting every business sector that we are engaging in.”
“Our research with over 50,000 SMEs and startup leaders show those that have strong ties with their local and global startup ecosystems tend to grow their revenues twice as fast and globalise their businesses,” he added.
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