Bruno (left) receiving a token of appreciation from Marcus (right).
Sebastian delivering his keynote address yesterday.
KOTA KINABALU: Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are encouraged to capitalize on technology and the web to improve their business performance and visibility.
Marcus Foon, Founder and Country Champion for Google Business Group (GBG) Malaysia, who made the call, said the GDayx Malaysia conference held here yesterday at Suria Sabah Mall aimed to provide SMEs the knowledge for making their business more successful through savvy use of web tools and technology.
“There are a lot of things you can use for free (online) especially in a business sense. A lot of times people do not know that these things actually exist,” he told the press here yesterday.
The full-day conference featured several keynote addresses by Marcus, Google Head of Outreach Programs for Emerging Markets, Sebastian Trzcinski Clément, and Google Malaysia Head of Communications and Public Affairs, Zefferi Yusof.
“The unique thing about Malaysia is that while we have a million SMEs, not all of them are online in a sense that they have a website or do online marketing because a majority of Malaysians are online.
“So we have an interesting situation where consumers that are very digitally-savvy are not discovering these SMEs whenever they do searches (online), for example,” said Zefferi.
Zefferi, however, added that this is changing significantly, especially in the past two years, where there are now more businesses discoverable online and reaping the benefits of being on the web.
“We know there is more room for improvement and we want to encourage more Malaysian SMEs to go digital,” he said.
In Sebastian’s keynote address, he touched on social media networks such as Google Plus as a tool with or without a business website for SMEs to promote their respective businesses.
According to him, 70 per cent of the one million SMEs in Malaysia do not own a website or lack an online presence.
“This is a bit of a problem when you see more and more people searching on the internet and accessing information that way,” he said.
Speaking personally, Sebastian, as a foreigner who travels, mentioned that hotels which do own a website are the ones foreign tourists travel to because of easier access to information.
“Put your business on the map. It only takes five minutes,” Sebastian said on businesses establishing an online presence via a social media page, adding that a full website takes about two hours with no web coding skills needed, for instance, using Google Sites.
Meanwhile, he said that there is a 145% mobile penetration rate in Malaysia and 30% of Malaysians are smartphone users.
“There is more power and technology in your hands today with a smartphone than the President of the United States, ten to 15 years ago,” Sebastian remarked.
However, he stressed the need for business owners to take into consideration designing their websites with desktop in mind despite the global trend of mobile users increasing.
Present at the event was Permanent Secretary to the Ministry of Resource Development and Information Technology, Bruno Vun.