How SMEs Are Using Subscription Services to Digitise Their Processes
Leveraging third-party software and hardware solutions could be the path to a new digital frontier.
“Digital solutions, if approached well, will help a business make their product or deliver their service better, faster and more economically,” says Tamara Ogilvie, who facilitates digital innovation in SMEs from within CSIRO’s SME Connect group. “As a business owner, the competitors that will keep your future self awake at night are those who’ve nailed it.”
Cloud-based analytics, AI, robotics: Industry 4.0 or the Fourth Industrial Revolution is here. While almost every Australian company is coping with rising costs, skills shortages or supply chain issues, opportunity knocks for SMEs with a new wave of integrated software and hardware solutions available via subscription. This means businesses that don’t have in-house technology expertise can access sophisticated tech, start small and scale their subscription as they grow.
Skincare provider TBH (The Biofilm Hack) is the brainchild of Rachael Wilde, who acquired the patent for a scientifically developed acne treatment and turned it into a range of products, launching TBH with her mum, Bridget Mitchell, in 2020. Their very small company – with a total of five employees – was plagued by variations in fulfilment needs. Averaging 80 to 100 ecommerce orders a day, they were often bowled over by Black Friday sales or Afterpay Day sales, which saw everybody on staff, plus casuals, picking and packing late into the night.
“We were spending way too much time rostering casual packers,” says Mitchell, who says the work of administering wages and superannuation for a constantly changing workforce was unsustainable. In looking for a third-party logistics provider, they came across Workit Spaces, coworking facilities that include access to warehousing, loading docks, forklifts for product handling and a sophisticated fulfilment service, SKUtopia.
SKU stands for Stock Keeping Unit, a unique inventory number, which allows robots to find specific products (every size, colour and material variation has its own SKU) in warehouses and select them to fulfil orders. SKUtopia integrates inventory control and customer communications with automated picking and cut-to-fit packaging, shipping to anywhere. A soonto- launch fleet of electric last-mile delivery vehicles will service greater Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane.
TBH moved in to Workit in 2022 and has handed its warehousing and fulfilment over to SKUtopia. “We’re only a month in,” says Mitchell, “and we’re at least cost neutral, with the potential to save.” Adds Wilde: “As the business scales, the cost efficiencies are there. We’ve set ourselves up, without incurring extra cost, with a pathway to efficient growth.”
Multifaceted communications platforms, once known as “call-centre AI”, are another category of digital product now available by subscription to big and small companies. “Historically, small businesses typically had an on-premises phone system,” says Gerard D’Onofrio, area vice president, ANZ, for comms platform Dialpad. “Or they’d issue mobile devices to their staff.” Add a provider to manage chat online and another to do SMS to customers and lines can get tangled. Dialpad streamlines all of that into one platform, plus it records and transcribes calls, providing note taking for salespeople who need to keep track of multiple conversations each day.
For Stratton Finance, a 25-year-old business that brokers loans for people and companies to buy moving assets, such as cars, caravans and farm machinery, Dialpad offers visibility over the number, duration and quality of calls, and creates a consistent customer experience.
With more than 200 sales staff across Australia and 20 to 30 lender partners, “we have about 40,000 combined inbound and outbound calls a month,” says Stratton’s chief technology officer, Chin Hui Yeo, who oversaw the integration of Dialpad into its sales force operations.
After a year, the company has seen greater customer engagement. New salespeople reach a high level of product familiarity, competence and success rates within two months instead of the previous three to six months. And employees are able to do their jobs from anywhere that has an internet connection.
