⚽ Micro businesses in Cyprus are struggling in the process of digitalization in times where World’s players are preparing to move to the concept of “Smart factories”

In the era of THE 4^th industrial revolution the critical question to be answered is how micro businesses can stay competitive. Technology is omnipresent and increasingly sophisticated analytics and applications based on AI and machine learning can handle many of the routine tasks. 

There is an ongoing debate if this will free up people to focus on handling exceptions and making higher-level decisions or will simply just replace many jobs.

But the purpose of the today’s article is not to focus on this debate. I brought it up just to highlight a phenomena that should scare most of the economists, politicians, marketers and owners of the micro businesses in Cyprus. (For people that are not familiar with the term “Micro business” are the business that are employing 0-9 people) Why this?

BECAUSE THE MICRO BUSINESSES IN CYPRUS ARE THE BEDROCK OF THE ECONOMY, THEY ACCONT FOR 93.3% of the economy.

In a project that I am researching the level of digitalization of Micro businesses in Cyprus I am shocked to realize how behind they are falling comparing to global players. In a world where manufacturing companies started to focus on employing technology such as artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, analytics and big data and started to run largely autonomously with the ability to self-correct, in Cyprus 93.3% of the businesses still struggle to understand the importance of digitalization.

In a world where we are talking about THE 4th industrial revolution and internet of things business and business leaders focus on how to handle the minute-to-minute scheduling decisions which cannot be automated and the impact of current task execution decisions, 93.3% of the Cyprus businesses struggle to understand that digital transformation is a technology proposition.

With these thoughts as a back-drop, let me share one of my biggest fear: will Micro Businesses in Cyprus really survive this transition?

What is the future of Cyprus economy when business people are still making decisions based on habit, gut feelings, tradition or experiences, instead of making decisions based on data?

At one digital marketing conference I heard A few months ago a sentence that stuck to my mind: 

Nowadays technology is accessible to everyone, so that IT is not where differentiation happens.

So the question here is:

Where and why things get stuck in Cyprus?

From the beginning of my career as a marketer I developed a system that helped me to answer questions that I could not answer directly: asking even more questions around the subject.

So, who seems to be the leader of the world Economy? One it is Germany…

What Germany does? The government initiates a program mobilizing SMEs towards Industrie 4.0 to enable Smart Products….WOW…...

In China, an initiative called “Made in China 2025” has also been funded by the Chinese government, which draws direct inspiration from Germany's "Industrie 4.0" initiative……

But I remember also that a few weeks ago I read a research paper about Poland SMEs transition from the crisis period. “SMEs' near-death experiences. Do local banks extend a helping hand?” have proven that SMEs operating in regions where local banks hold a relatively strong position suffer losses less frequently, accumulate lower losses in relation to equity capital, report shorter series of losses, have a lower probability of legal bankruptcy or serious financial distress, and recover more easily from financial difficulties. Their study suggests that policies shaping the local structures of banking markets have a material impact on distressed SMEs' prospects.

The answer to my question is very clear now:

Micro businesses in Cyprus will not survive and become viable unless government will develop FAST programs and policies helping them on this transition!!