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Kendi Ntwiga 

No doubt, economic recovery will be buoyed by the success of start-ups and small businesses.

In Kenya, it’s estimated that between 80 and 98 per cent of all businesses fall into the small- to medium-sized (SMBs) category, highlighting the crucial role of entrepreneurship plays in economy.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, we learnt that building resilience ensures business continuity in ever-changing market conditions – in which many SMBs are operating on tighter budgets.

The required resilience is rooted in digital transformation. It allows businesses to streamline operations and become more agile in response to future, disruptive changes.

On the digital transformation journey, cloud adoption is a critical step toward resilience for SMBs.

Beyond this first step, conducting business in the cloud in the long-term is the best bet for future-proofing operations in a global digital economy. 

The global digital economy will be driven by the latest tech, from artificial intelligence and machine learning to the Internet of Things, which all use the cloud as a platform.

Cloud computing is integral to new IT-driven business developments, which will stimulate the economy by driving new solutions to problems.

Recent surveys demonstrate the tech’s ability to meet this need. The Future of Business Resilience report by Microsoft in 2020, shows investing in the latest technology results in 20-30 per cent higher workforce productivity, and 40-50 per cent faster speed to market among the benefits. 

Investing in such tech pre-emptively, instead of reactively also delivers 50 per cent higher returns while speeding up digital transformation by 14 per cent.

With economies having moved out of the initial ‘response’ phase to pandemic-driven market changes, now is the time to embrace proactive solutions for building sustainable businesses of the future. 

SMBs who migrate operations to the cloud will reap big in improved productivity, faster speed to market and a higher return on investment.

However, driving uptake of beneficial cloud solutions means meeting unique infrastructure needs to make connectivity accessible. 

Data centres, fibre and mobile wireless networks have struggled to provide affordable, consistent, high-speed Internet connectivity to underserved communities.

This prompted Microsoft’s Airband initiative, which uses TV white spaces (unused broadband frequencies between TV channels) to deliver inclusive connectivity. 

With initiatives like Airband addressing connectivity needs, SMBs can leverage the power of cloud-based tech, which removes potential roadblocks — high cost of infrastructure, access to new tech and investment needed to diversify business for larger audiences — to establishing and growing a small business. 

According to a Deloitte report, 93 per cent of surveyed businesses from around the globe relied on the cloud to meet some or all of their AI needs.

Allowing faster speed to market also creates a space for innovative thinking to flourish in, without the time constraints of a failed test weighing on business productivity. 

The constant need to invest in system upgrades, to maintain security systems, for example, are further costs saved by an SMB that has migrated to the cloud, where updates are automatically made by the cloud vendor.

Continuous updates give peace of mind from a security standpoint, as does the automated backing up of data.

If needed, data recovery from the cloud as opposed to an on-premises system is quicker, which in turn spells less business downtime. 

Fluctuating demand in a constantly evolving market puts pressure on an SMB’s finite resources.

For small businesses, the ability to quickly and easily scale up or down on IT services is a cost-saving feature of the cloud that enables agility.

This need for flexible scalability is why one Nairobi-based start-up, M-KOPA Solar, migrated its services to Microsoft Azure.

Using cloud-based services like Microsoft’s Kaizala – a mobile productivity and messaging app – has allowed M-KOPA’s in-field sales team to redirect time spent on tasks to boost productivity.

Thanks to the app, data compilation, which used to be a six- to eight-hour job for each team member, has dramatically been reduced to a less than a minute task.

This is how the cloud can streamline operations to free staff up for more innovative, productive tasks. 

Recently surveyed tech-decision makers indicated they planned to increase cloud spending by 68 per cent this year.

This demonstrates the critical role cloud-based technology will play in enabling inclusive economic recovery, with SMBs able to innovate far quicker and more securely at a much lower cost.  

This is the enabling environment that we should be nurturing for SMBs and start-ups if our economies are to successfully rebound post-Covid pandemic. — The author works for Microsoft Country Manager for Kenya