MYOB, SMEs and the great online advance

Commentators and politicians often fall into the trap of thinking that the corporate giants represent the business community. They don’t. The engine room of Australian business is the myriad of medium and smaller-sized businesses (SMEs), so what they are doing has enormous ramifications for the nation.

In this week’s Management Insights MasterClass series, we reveal that a massive revolution, which will change the face of our business community, is taking place within SMEs. There is no better person to describe what is happening than the chief executive of MYOB, Tim Reed, whose company provides accounting software systems for about 70 per cent of Australian SMEs.

But while this revolution is lifting confidence among a wide range of SMEs, one group is in the doldrums: retailers. It’s as though the government, the Reserve Bank, and technology have ganged up on the retail sector; but more of that later.

The revolution is actually in two parts.

The first part came in the middle of the global financial crisis when SMEs began tailoring their business to cash flow and wanted MYOB systems to help them achieve their cash goals. Cash flow management is at the heart of every business but in the era of virtually unlimited credit, the SME sector was not as vigilant as it should have been.

The second part of the revolution is more profound. Reed explains that small and medium businesses are asking: “How do I make more from the internet?; “How do I engage my customers online?”

Incredible as it may seem, the majority of Australian businesses do not have a website. Lots still use a ‘Yahoo’, or a ‘Gmail’ email account, not realising that their email address is now seen by more people than their logo, or the name on their physical premises. In the past, companies with websites were concerned with colours, etc. It is now far more important to rate well in the search engines.

We have been forecasting the swing to electronic business for years, but Reed explains that now it is actually happening over the whole spectrum of business. Once companies get “with it”, it will change their marketing production and distribution and greatly increase productivity. In the process, many will be left behind.

Read the full article by Robert Gottliebsen…