WB to support 600 Vietnamese SMEs

About 600 small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Vietnam will get support in applying technology solutions to improve labour productivity and their competitiveness as part of a project launched on July 22 by the World Bank (WB).

The project, which will be implemented by the WB in collaboration with Real-Time Analytics (RTA), a research consulting and technology development firm, aims to assist Vietnamese SMEs in the digital transformation process.

The project will focus on four contents including assessing the health of businesses to identify problems that cause a decrease in their performance and competitiveness; raising awareness of digital transformation and digital transformation strategies; applying technology solutions to help businesses digitise their operations; and measuring the effectiveness of digital transformation application.

In addition to supporting knowledge training on digital transformation and information access services, the project also provides financial assistance to SMEs in applying three technological solutions on sale and personnel management and internal communication.

Le Dang Trung, director of RTA company, said SMEs are the largest part of the business community in particular and the economy in general. 

They always face difficulties because they do not have many resources and lack capacity in terms of management and technology, thus, lowering their competitiveness. Therefore, the WB and RTA want to create a digital transformation programme for SMEs to easily access, without spending resources or investment costs, he said.

There will be two digital transformation funding packages for Vietnamese SMEs, namely Digital Express and Digital Prime. 

The Digital Express package will cover the finance of all corporate employees who register to use it, within 12 months from August 2021 to July 2022. 300 small and medium enterprises will be selected for this package.

The Digital Prime package will finance 20% to 100% of registered business employees. It will be effective for 12 months, starting from August 2022 to July 2023 and about 300 businesses will be chosen for the package.

At the launching ceremony for the project, Shawn Tan, a WB expert, said the project focused on supplying a set of enterprise resource planning (ERP), allowing businesses to collect, store, manage and interpret administrative data from its operation.

When businesses adopt these tools, they can improve communication and coordination among employees, as well as have more efficient administrative and business planning processes, thus better serve customers, increase labour productivity, sales and profits, he said.

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