He said technology provided endless opportunities of growth for SMEs, and there was, therefore, the need to incorporate it into the day-to-day running of the business.

At the third International Conference on Business Management and Entrepreneurial Development (ICBMED) at the University of Professional Studies, Accra (UPSA), Mr Adiyiah said most SMEs were not growing because they did not have digital development strategies.

“If you don’t embrace technology these days, you will be left behind. Technology is transforming the way business is done and SMEs are being forced to do things differently. It has become a matter of survival,” he said.

The annual ICBMED conference seeks to provide the forum to dialogue and propose research-based solutions to the developmental problems in Africa. It was on the theme, “Small and Medium-Scale Enterprise development in Africa: Information and communications technology (ICT) as a strategic tool.”

Go digital

Mr Adiyiah said it was important for businesses to incorporate the right technology across all facets of the business to make work faster and to ensure that they remained relevant to customers.

“SMEs must react appropriately to remain relevant in business. They must transform their vision to fit into the digital space,” he noted.

The digital strategy, he said, involved the use of ICT to analyse, formulate and implement an organisation’s strategy.

He, however, cautioned SMEs to develop an effective security framework to ensure that the drive towards digitisation doesn’t affect the business negatively.

Providing solutions

The Vice Chancellor of UPSA, Prof. Abednego Amartey, said every year, the conference selected topics that required solutions necessary to help address emerging business challenges in the country and the continent at large.

“Annually, the ICBMED selects a challenging issue and provides the forum to interrogate the issue and propose research-based solutions,” he stated.

Prof. Amartey explained that ICT could fast-track Africa’s drive to development and there was, therefore, the need to empower SMES in that regard.

He expressed confidence that by the end of the two-day conference, experts would share best practices to trigger the growth of SMEs in the country through ICT.

“The conference seeks to provide professionals and experts in IT to share best practices necessary to trigger growth of our SMES for our socio-economic development,” he said.