Intel urges SMEs to ‘Level Up Your Business’

By Digital News Asia September 9, 2013

645,136 SMEs operating in Malaysia, or 97.3% of entire business establishment
Free consultation as well as exclusive deals for SME business owners

Intel urges SMEs to ‘Level Up Your Business’

INTEL Malaysia has launched its ‘Level Up Your Business’ campaign for small and medium enterprises (SMEs), as part of ongoing efforts to increase ICT adoption and innovation amongst Malaysian SMEs.

The ‘Level Up Your Business’ campaign aims to encourage business owners to assess the use of IT in their business; while Intel, through its partners, will offer free consultation as well as exclusive deals and bundles for Intel-powered PCs to SME business owners.

Business owners also stand a chance to win a RM20,000 IT upgrade for their company by interacting with the ‘Level Up Your Business’ IT diagnostic tool on the microsite and expressing their ideas on how an IT upgrade can creatively change their business.

For more information about the contest, click the Level Up Your Business page.

The Intel announcement came at the conclusion of a roundtable talk with SME Corp Malaysia and Centre of Entrepreneur Development and Research (Cedar) of SME Bank that discussed best industry practices to improve competitiveness, productivity and profitability through the use of technology.

Intel urges SMEs to ‘Level Up Your Business’ “As we set forward to achieving targets set by the Malaysian Government in the SME Masterplan 2012-2020, it is imperative that Malaysian SMEs take decisive steps towards improving the productivity and agility of their business with the right technology in place,” Uday Marty (pic), managing director of Intel South East Asia, said at the SME Roundtable.

According to the SME Census 2011, there are a total of 645,136 SMEs operating in Malaysia, representing 97.3% of the entire business establishment.

The Malaysian Government, through the SME Masterplan 2012-2020, has proposed six high impact programmes to help SMEs move up the value chain with specific targets including a 41% contribution to the national Gross Domestic Product or GDP (up from 32% in 2010) as well as contributing to 62% of employment in the country (up from 59% in 2010) and 25% of exports (up from 19% in 2010).

Among other things, these high impact programmes are aimed at speeding the ‘internationalisation’ of local SMEs as well as empowering the bottom 40% of the income group via inclusive innovation and technology.

“Above and beyond equipping local SMEs with IT equipment, Intel is also committed to helping local SMEs obtain the skills and resources they need to take their business to the next level,” said Uday.

“Intel Malaysia and Cedar recently signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to explore making two training programmes – Intel Learn Easy Steps and Intel Entrepreneurship Basics (E-Basics) – to Cedar,” he added.

These training programmes are proposed to be incorporated into SME Bank’s training courses and will be conducted by Cedar.

Intel urges SMEs to ‘Level Up Your Business’ Intel Learn Easy Steps is a training module suited for adult and youth learners with little or no experience with computers, and who are in need of basic technology skills. Intel E-Basics, on the other hand, is a starter toolkit which contains context-based learning and modules on the fundamentals of entrepreneurship.

“Cost is still a key consideration for the adoption of technology,” said Cedar chief operating officer Dr Sheikh Ghazali Abod (pic).

“With our collaboration with Intel Malaysia as well as our existing loan programmes, we aim to encourage SMEs to move away from manual processes to adopting automation in their day-to-day operations,” he added.

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