As a digital consultant and project manager, Meka helps SMEs plan and execute projects to digitalise their businesses.
As an experienced project manager who has worked with SMEs for close to 20 years, Meka D.S.W.‘s job is never, ever done.
“There are clients I’ve known for more than 10 years who come back to ask, ‘Meka, how can I do this better?’,” she says, “I’m their friend and trusted advisor.”
Meka currently works at RSM Stone Forest, one of IMDA’s appointed digital consultancy operators that helps SMEs digitalise. She checks in frequently on her clients, even when they have no ongoing projects together.
“During festivals like Lunar New Year, I personally deliver gifts because it’s an opportunity to touch base,” she says, “we might grab lunch and talk about what’s happening for their business over the next six months.”
Under IMDA’s Chief Technology Officer-as-a-Service (CTOaaS) programme, Meka offers SMEs one complimentary digital consultancy and one project management session each.
These sessions help SMEs learn where they are now in terms of digitalisation; where they’d like to be; and how they can get there.
“Often, SMEs don’t know what they want, how to get it, or who to work with,” says Meka, “we’re here to bridge that gap for them.”
Helping SMEs plan for digitalisation
One of Meka’s clients is ActivHealth, a supplements company founded in the early 1990s. Managing Director Irene Soon discovered CTOaaS through word of mouth and sought a consultant to assess ActivHealth’s digital infrastructure.
“Over the years, we have diversified and expanded our portfolio from two brands to almost ten: our old inventory software couldn’t keep up anymore,” says Irene. “We were relying on in-person seminars for outreach, and when the pandemic hit we realised we didn’t have the right software to organise webinars.”
ActivHealth’s customers are mostly medical practitioners who appreciate the brand’s evidence-based products.
Irene was wary of rushing to buy a software solution that could become a white elephant, so she decided to approach CTOaaS for guidance: “We’d done small-scale projects like e-commerce site development ourselves, but this is a 360-degree project that impacts the whole company.”
First, digital consultant Meka pinpointed which areas of ActivHealth’s business would gain most from a digital solution. There are many solutions available covering cybersecurity, customer relationship management, enterprise resource planning, accounting, HR, or more.
“At the beginning, Meka screened a short video presentation that helped us understand what every business should have in place and where we stood,” Irene says. They then discussed ActivHealth’s most pressing needs to figure out its major business priorities and challenges.
Enabling SMEs to meet their needs while keeping costs low
Meka recommends most of her clients to select off-the-shelf solutions that are pre-approved by IMDA, as many of them are covered by grants and can be implemented within one to three months.
“Pre-approved solutions provide extra assurance because they have been evaluated thoroughly by IMDA” for their relevance, reliability, and productivity potential for SMEs, Meka adds.
If a degree of customisation is required, implementation can take up to six months as variables in the software will need to be adjusted and tested. “Customisation is not covered by grants,” Meka says, “so to manage clients’ costs, we always try to source and recommend an off-the-shelf solution can fit at least 80% of their needs.”
Meka works closely with clients to figure out what areas of a business need to be digitalised, and which vendors to work with.
Guiding SMEs to choose trustworthy vendors
Next, Meka helps SMEs choose vendors by guiding them to ask the right questions.
Meka uses a vendor management checklist to make choosing a software vendor easier. The checklist includes things SMEs might not know to look out for, like what level of maintenance and after-sales service a vendor offers.
“The digital consultant gave me a fixed list of criteria that made comparing different vendors easier,” Irene says, “whenever we requested more information, a vendor’s willingness to cooperate would show me they were trustworthy.”
Irene says that interest in ActivHealth’s wellness products is steadily increasing, and that digitalisation is necessary for the company to keep up with the pace of growth.
Holding SMEs’ hands through project implementation
CTOaaS offers time-strapped SMEs project management services to make implementation smooth and seamless.
“SME owners don’t have the bandwidth to run business as usual and project manage, so we try to reassure them that things are moving along,” Meka says.
Meka sets timelines with the appointed vendor and measures progress with the client through once- or twice-weekly project status meetings.
She also helps conduct user acceptance testing and training, which she says is one of the most important steps: “I always tell SMEs they need to make sure their staff and customers are ready because software needs to fit people, and not the other way around.”
With Meka’s guidance, ActivHealth is currently planning a three-day digital roadmap kickoff for its staff. Over the next few years, the company plans to digitalise more areas of its business and even hire in-house digital specialists.
Always moving forward
Since technology is ever evolving, Meka says SMEs should understand that digitalisation is not a one-and-done deal, but a long-term journey instead.
“I’m always happy to go into a call whenever SMEs have any issues or burning questions. When they come back to ask for advice, I’m glad because it means they trust us,” Meka says.
