Digital Transformation in SMEs

Nowadays, digital transformation is key in any type of business. The 40% of Spanish companies will not exist in its current form in the next few years.. It will not be the strongest or the most important ones that will survive, but the ones that best adapt to this era and make a change based on the digitalization of the company. 

While cost reduction is the primary objective that Spanish companies hope to achieve by applying technology or Artificial Intelligence in their business models, digital transformation is nowadays the priority challenge for any SME.

Digitalization is a major cultural change that, in order to be carried out in an orderly manner, must be communicated and shared throughout the company. It is a very important change that consists of transforming the DNA of the company to face the drastic change that the current market is demanding.

The main barriers that a company faces when tackling a digital transformation process are multiple and probably the first and most important one is the resistance to change. 

In all organizations there is resistance to change. When you have to tackle such a deep transformation process, logically there are people who do not feel ready and are afraid because they do not know how to do what is being asked of them or they are simply used to doing things one way and do not want to change their procedure. Therefore, it is important for the company to be aware of this, as it has to identify which people can be recycled and which are willing to learn new working methods. Logically, the company has to make an effort to provide adequate training to further develop the potential of human resources.

According to the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Digital TransformationIn Spain, a plan called Digital Spain 2025 is already being contemplated, which aims to address a series of measures aimed at promoting this digital transformation process that will entail an investment, both public and private, of around 70,000 million euros.

Although the reality is that companies today are still wondering if this really affects their business or if this technology is really so necessary in their organizations. It should be noted that this process is not an era of change but rather, it is a change of era and we have to become aware of this and start working proactively encouraging this digital transformation within the company.

The key to the success of digital transformation is for senior management to lead the development of organizational cultural change, giving greater responsibility to teams and fostering collaboration among them.

Today, many senior managers are already working and promoting digitization in their companies and, above all, in knowing how to use the information that has been stored for years in their databases and from which they have never extracted its maximum value. As we all know, companies generate millions of data and information is power.

The problem with all this data generation is how we are going to convert this data into intelligent information, useful information and quality information that will allow us to have a competitive advantage in the market. We are not only talking about Big Data but also about Small Data, that is, the data we already have in our companies, for example, in our ERPs or billing systems. 

For this reason, from Gamco we have been concerned about data management and control for more than 10 years. This has led us to develop solutions focused on such decisive sectors as the financial and banking sector, with which we have deployed our technology to give value to the data and to be able to make the best decisions based on it.

Thus, this technology, proven in large companies, has had such significant quantifiable returns that we wanted to take a step forward and package our solution. ARM (Advanced Risk Management) to reach out to all these small and medium-sized companies that are looking to make a digital transformation-oriented change and offer them a scalable solution to predict and mitigate defaults in their customer portfolio.

Through our early warning system, we are able to predict the number of customers that are going to default on payments, who currently have no problems in the payment of invoices. In addition, our solution allows SMEs to customize the number of days in advance that they want to be alerted of non-payment, e.g. 30, 60, 90 or 120 days. This helps companies to optimize the cost of risk and reduce the amount of provisions to deal with such non-payments.

ARM advantages for digital transformation in SMEs

ARM has many advantages, among which we can highlight the following:

• No major requirements are necessary for its implementation.
• Flexible model under user control: customer cloud or Gamco cloud.
• Total confidentiality of the data, they remain the client's property.
• Easy and fast integration through: APIs, batch files and https web.

ARM enables companies to exploit their historical sales, invoice and receivables data, giving them immense value for faster, more agile and accurate decision making.