The COVID-19 crisis is accelerating the need for both entrepreneurs and intermediaries to digitalize. ANDE aims to support them in doing so successfully, increasing their resilience and allowing them to scale.
Digitalization refers to the adoption of digital tools and practices for service delivery, or the interaction between business development services organizations and their clients.
An ANDE survey of 30 intermediaries found the average share of services that are digital jumped from 24% pre-pandemic to 72% at the end of 2020, as social distancing and lockdown measures took effect throughout the world. Organizations’ aspirations for the long term averaged out at 62%.
As we emerge from the pandemic, what level and type of digitalization makes sense for ESOs and the SGBs they support?
ANDE and Digitalization
ANDE is working to understand and improve the ability of SGBs and entrepreneurial support organizations to accelerate their transition to digital support services and the overall digitalization of SGBs.
ANDE seeks to enhance the digitalization of the SGB sector through increased resources for intermediaries and support organizations and specialized services to help small businesses digitalize their own operations. This will strengthen the resilience of businesses in a post-COVID environment, and help businesses reach greater scale through digitally enabled business models.
Some organizations are able to digitalize services easier than others. For example, delivering asynchronous training on specific topics using digital platforms is easier than creating online spontaneous real-time peer-to-peer learning. The decision as to what services an ESO should digitize and how to do so most effectively will depend on many factors, including types and locations of SGBs served, strategic ambition, and existing implementation capacity. Organizations must plan their digitalization journey intentionally, keeping in mind these factors.
The future of business is digital. Yet many businesses face obstacles in adjusting to this new reality. Learn what ANDE and its members are doing to solve these challenges.
ANDE partnered with the Argidius Foundation and Dalberg to develop a strategic guidebook to support business development services (BDS) providers to successfully adopt digital practices and tools. It explores current practices and opportunities across the landscape to guide support organizations in using digital technologies to provide services to entrepreneurs in an effective and inclusive way.
This assessment tool is designed as a diagnostic for an organization to consider the steps it may need to take on its digitalization journey, and receive recommendations based on answers with further reading on best practices and considerations.
ANDE’s Digitalization Learning Labs are a series of convenings that aim to support the digital transformation of the SGB sector by exchanging knowledge among ANDE members and evaluating their needs. This document is divided into the three modules of the Learning Lab sessions that were carried out by ANDE chapters. Each includes the purpose of the stage, the diverse methodologies that support digital transformation, and reflections on how and why to use them, based on the experience of three ANDE members.
In 2021, ANDE organized three matchmaking events, one each in Latin America, Africa, and Asia, in which technical experts (consulting firms, technical implementers, developers) came together to facilitate constructive connections between entrepreneurial support organizations and digital solutions or services vendors.
Thanks to all the vendors who participated in the three matchmaking events. Learn more about some of the solutions in the following playlists.
"COVID-19 has taken a painful toll on numerous aspects of society, including the small and growing business sector. To restrain the spread of the virus, governments in many countries introduced lockdowns, social distancing, and mandatory shutdowns. However, those measures interrupted many commercial activities worldwide, causing major economic disruption.
Although the pandemic necessitated the transition to virtual program delivery, the experience allowed stakeholders in the entrepreneurial ecosystem to discover the benefits and limitations of virtual support. Now that lockdowns have largely ended and economic activity is recovering, support organizations need to decide whether to continue with virtual entrepreneurial support, revert to in-person mode, or adopt a hybrid approach to retain the benefits of both virtual and in-person programming. To understand the effectiveness of virtual support and to synthesize lessons learned during this forced experimentation period, ANDE used surveys and interviews to gather perspectives from both entrepreneurs and intermediaries on what worked - and what did not - in the shift to virtual programming."
ANDE’s Digitalization Learning Labs are a series of convenings that aim to support the digital transformation of the SGB sector by exchanging knowledge among ANDE members and evaluating their needs. This document is divided into the three modules of the Learning Lab sessions that were carried out by ANDE chapters. Each includes the purpose of the stage, the diverse methodologies that support digital transformation, and reflections on how and why to use them, based on the experience of three ANDE members.
We're exploring how ANDE members in East and Southeast Asia navigate through the digital world in our new video series ‘Exploring Digitalization Journeys.’
We featured ANDE members and their entrepreneurs in our communications series ‘Exploring Digitalization Journeys’. This blog meets entrepreneurs of Mercy Corps Indonesia, an international non-profit organization founded in 1979 that has helped people in vulnerable areas; 42 countries and has helped more than 19 million people improve their quality of life.
We featured ANDE members and their entrepreneurs in our communications series ‘Exploring Digitalization Journeys’. This blog meets ONOW Myanmar, a social enterprise committed to delivering financially sustainable positive change in the lives of the entrepreneurs they work with, to hear how they digitally support entrepreneurs in Myanmar.
As the movement towards digital transformation around the world accelerates, we’re exploring how ANDE members are adapting to the digital world - through our new video series ‘Exploring Digitalization Journeys.’
