SME (Small Medium Enterprises) and Internet : an 'Old Song' or New Chance?

There are two press release came to wire@dailysocial last week. Both of them give information about SME, one of them is SITTI and another is Belibu.com.

In their press release, SITTI explain that they are preparing initiative for SME (Small and Medium Enterprises) in Indonesia through SITTI359. This program will collaborate with Satutempat.com. The initiative is called as “Kedai UKM SITTI”. It is an end to end solution for SME to improve their selling through digital marketing. This program will be launched in October 2011, the video about it has been released on August 17^th, 2011.

Meanwhile Belibu.com gives online media service and get local entrepreneur and SME as the target, also as their users’ reference. Belibu.com also provides facilities such as writing review on enterprises then upload it to their website.

Support or program for SME is not a new thing. Moreover, there are lot of people run their business in this area, which is even being a mainstay for business and entrepreneurship development. There are already some services for this market, which are managed or collaborated with government, including the support for internet access for SME owners.

Plasa.com, for example, they promote their partner with eBay for targeting this segment, also Exportnesia, as stated by Marketeers magazine on July 2011 edition, has one aim to ask for SME owners to work on International market.

Still noted form Marketeers magazine, SME contribution for National Gross Domestic Product is 54% in 2010, the business value is Rp 11,6 trillion and predicted to grow to Rp 12,87 trillion in 2011.

The development of SME can be a chance for internet-based services. Although I am sure that SME’s owners has already known how to use internet to maximize their business, there are still many chances to be found and created.

Actually I am more interested in SITTI and Satutempat.com plan. It simply can be inferred that Satutempat is a part of Domikado, a middle-low segment of Doku. SatuTempat provides ‘satu tempat (one place)’ completed with its own payment system, escrow, and marketplace also Flymygoods.com, a kind of service to help the product delivery from and to Indonesia. Both services are introduced at least in the previous Doku event and still in improving stage.

Back to SITTI, what kind of support will be given to SMEs from SITTI? If we watch the video about Internet for SME, the collaboration with SatuTempat hasn’t been shown, the video just like an advertisement from SITTI. May be the collaboration of the service is on the promotion area, including marketplace, promotion and services from SatuTempat.

Collaboration of two services always seems interesting to me. With the development of technology in its second wave, it will be nice to see that the collaboration can complete the competition of online business. Online store and internet promotion can be two easiest target of SME, despite other needs. Each online store service provider has to improve their programs and work on the same field, that is SME.

As in my previous article which supports the music services development, this article offers almost the similar thing. The established SME, or the newbies to internet can get services to maximize their business while trying to find win-win solution for them.

Let see what SITTI has in collaboration with Satutempat. For other e-commerce, SME is good target and right market, the growing one. I also hope that not only SME but other micro businesses can use internet development to improve their business. The chance is still big in Indonesia.

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