The digital transition and the future of the SMEs

Resumo

This paper intends to present in which way small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) can focus on digital transition to adapt their business models during economic crises. Digital issues are related not only with the development of SME(s) but to the society as a whole. In some organizations, the digital process was already put in place, the digital means in a way were existing in the before pandemic world, but this outbreak made a very quick shift to the digital world. As the customer changed his behaviour rapidly in a way the organization had to adapt their business models to give rapid response to this change and the most common response was to create virtually their business. The actual state of economy in the COVID-19 pandemic is rising some questions as the decline of global economy and intensification of digital technology, as a possible consequence a stagnation of the globalization process (Sułkowski, 2020). Some of the challenges related to the Coronavirus outbreak have been and related to a profound insecurity, deficient information, excessive risk, and necessity (Dwivedi et al., 2020). As the topic is still in progress and is someway the pandemic situation is still in here, only some reports are used to characterise these elements and to establish a link between them. Is what way this change still valid in the post pandemic world? How will the organizations reinvent and also the digital transition will it be enough for the survival of the SMEs? In what ways the technologies are crucial and appointed to act as the critical success factor for the businesses? Asking and responding to these questions is essential to SMEs success in the near future. As is obvious the present research presents the limitation as were not enough studies regarding the approach of SME(s) regarding the digital transformation.