Ricoh is helping small businesses capitalise on Digital Boost opportunity
Making technology easier for small businesses in Aotearoa New Zealand is a key opportunity to help them scale, grow, and thrive.
The opportunity was identified by the New Zealand government and has since been promoted via its Digital Boost programme that it launched in 2020. This programme has the aim of “working towards the most digitally engaged small business sector in the world”.
Digital Boost is a collaboration between government and industry to help New Zealand small businesses take the steps to become more digital savvy. This is something of an uphill journey – According to an annual survey of nations across the APAC region, New Zealand’s small businesses do “lag” when it comes to digital savviness.
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However, a broad cross-section of the IT industry – including Ricoh, HP, and Intel® – there is a very positive outlook for Kiwi small businesses, because opportunity is huge, and this is why the industry participation in Digital Boost has been so robust. After all, as the government has noted: “The New Zealand Institute of Economic Research (NZIER) estimates that a 20% increase in the uptake of cloud computing could increase New Zealand’s GDP by between $3.5 billion and $6.2 billion. Research completed for Google suggests that if fully leveraged, digital transformation could unlock up to $46.6 billion of annual economic value in New Zealand by 2030.”
The industry’s role in delivering on this opportunity is helping small businesses to firstly understand the opportunity, and then access the technologies to take action. This is where Ricoh, HP, Intel® and others are delivering.
The Tech Stack Value Proposition
Perhaps the single greatest challenge for small businesses in participating in the digital economy is a lack of awareness. It’s no secret that New Zealand is in the midst of a deep IT skills shortage. This means that even for those small businesses that have the resources to invest in technology, the ability to actually find the people to execute the vision isn’t there.
One of the key areas where Digital Boost adds value is in helping small businesses develop their skills without necessarily needing to dedicate additional resources to an IT team. Digital Boost Educate, for example, is a free training program that features over 500 video tutorials and Q & A sessions, supported by daily workshops and a live helpdesk that’s available to every small business.
But it’s also in the provision of technology that Digital Boost makes it seamless and easy for small businesses to understand how to capitalise on the opportunity.
Ricoh, in partnership with companies like HP powered by Intel®, have all come together with Digital Boost to launch a hardware stack specifically tailored towards giving small businesses everything they need to up their digital game.
This stack was developed through a series of workshops, and is incredibly easy for a small business to access: it is delivered following a 15-minute consultation with The Warehouse Group, who will provide a report identifying the gaps in the business’s current hardware, and advice on how to best fill those gaps.
As Ricoh general manager of digital services, Roly Smoldon, said in an interview with Reseller News, the greatest value of this stack is that it cuts through the noise for small businesses that are inundated with information on what can be done with technology, but often struggle to find actionable insights out of that information.
“In IT, we have this paradox of choice, and we actually get paralysis as a result, because there are so many different options and brands,” Roly said.
“They’re worried about making a wrong decision, so they’ll buy the cheapest thing, only to work out in two months’ time that it doesn’t do what they need it to do.”
As all the technologies in the stack are tailored towards the needs of small businesses, they are ideally suited to work in collaboration with the information shared through Digital Boost Educate and the rest of the Digital Boost programme. From there, small business owners can start taking immediate steps to take advantage of the digital opportunity.
Learn more about Ricoh’s solutions for small businesses and the Digital Boost hardware stack here.
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