At the centre of every economy, there is always room for Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) which actually make up the vast majority of firms that operate in Nigeria.
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Oftentimes, socio-economic crises related to people’s health, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, can be expected to have dire effects on SMEs, because these businesses require strong connections with people, whether they are customers or suppliers.
To protect this vital sector from collapse due to socio-economic problems, Innovation practices are introduced, which enforces the effective implementation of new solutions to challenges faced by SMEs, and the enterprise’s survival is strongly linked to these innovation practices.
Innovation Practices And Survival Of SMEs
The key driver of innovation practices in enterprises is the goal to be compensated in form of achieving a set of desired outcomes, resulting from the realization of the marketing objectives. Therefore, innovation refers to the use of new technology or new management practices in an organization to achieve a targeted improvement in its operations.
Innovation is usually grounded on the business informational support received from the enterprise surrounding environment and is the core factor behind the survival and continuity of enterprises (SMEs). However, survival also results from achieving victory in the face of crises imposed by the external environment.
These innovation practices include the following:
- New marketing mechanisms:
This involves introducing different ways by which the cost of services are being projected to the public, which includes the development and increase of an enterprise social media presence, offering of free consultations services, investment in online ads, usage of email marketing to nurture leads, and offering of incentives to employees to refer new clients. For example, an online Investment firm that offers a certain percentage to customers for referral of clients.
- Effective implementation of new ideas in relation to the organization’s product or services:
This entails the immediate enforcement of an idea regarding the organization’s product. For example, a doorbell enterprise that comes up with a Ring video doorbell as a new product idea.
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- Better administrative practices to make work more effective:
Provide a better route for the promotion process, be a true collaborator, improve communication between staff, embrace telecommuting, which involves employees working from home in order to maximize time, provide training and career development, offer bonuses to reward good performance, and build trust within the business.
- Upgrades to the technological sector in SMEs
This includes the technology impact in the business, and this enhances its innovativeness that results in a competitive advantage. For example, the establishment and regular upgrades of an enterprise website or the use of mobile applications will surely give it an edge over its local competitors.
However, for these innovation practices to be achieved fully, external support (direct or indirect) is needed by small and medium businesses, because this external support provides them with the essential knowledge and information necessary to strengthen their competitive position and implement innovation.
Direct external support usually takes the form of financial aid that is to be used in the acquisition of assets, the purchase of technology, or the implementation of development plans with the aim of solving funding deficiency problems. On the other hand, indirect external support takes the form of consultancy, ideas, and advice provided by professionals, experts, advisory offices and educational institutions to help eradicate the lack of knowledge and increase the available amount of information readily available to these SMEs.
In conclusion, it is important to know that innovation practices occur through technology, products, managerial and marketing means. And for all these practices to take place, external support is needed, because it provides an enterprise with human and financial resources that undergird innovation within the enterprise, which actualizes a better business performance and survival also.
Featured Image Source: Alcor Fund
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This article was first published on 10th January 2022
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Grace Christos Is a content creator with a proven track record of success in content marketing, online reputation management, sales strategy, and so much more.
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