SME seminar highlights need to connect and engage

The saying goes, “Rome was not built in a day”, and the same applies to operating a small to medium business in a highly competitive market in the digital age.

To navigate the tricky waters of entrepreneurship, the 140 delegates attending the SME Growth Summit 2024, supported by Caxton Local Media and hosted by Community Business Owners (CBO) at Emperors Palace on July 17 were privy to trade secrets shared by industry leaders.

With digitisation, automation, streamlining, scaling and artificial intelligence being buzzwords throughout the SM sector, Andrew Wainwright, one of the founders of CBO, said it remains imperative for business owners to regularly connect, engage and network.

CBO is an initiative that has created a fast-growing platform for local business owners to achieve just that.

Andrew Bourne, the regional manager Zoho Africa Corporation, broke down digitisation, saying that effective integrated systems have the potential of championing employees, thus freeing up their time to focus on customer relations.

“Customer experience is reactive. It is, therefore, imperative that business automation meets business needs while remaining personal,” he said.

Taking a step back in time, Jacqui Hansen, the head of marketing at Spark Media, a division of Caxton, shared the story of Caxton Local Media’s humble beginnings.

“In 1978, two small business owners had a vision of creating a platform to be a mouthpiece for communities to assist with its development, and so Caxton was born,” said Hansen.