GOOGLE Philippines on Wednesday launched a campaign aiming to encourage micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) to open a web site in an initiative to assist the government in its objective to digitalize business transactions.
The campaign, labelled as an MSME caravan, will teach small firms digital skills and introduce tools that can help them compete in the online landscape. Google Philippines reported that just 1 percent of the over 1 million MSMEs in the country has a web site.
During the campaign, Google Philippines and the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) will conduct training sessions among MSME owners that will orient them of the digital world, latest consumer insights and business tools such as Google My Business and the Primer app.
The training sessions have already started, and more than 2,780 MSMEs from across eight regions have been trained by the program since last year. Google Philippines has not set a goal on how many MSMEs they plan to train this year, but said that in coordination with the DTI, they hope to reach more throughout 2020.
Google Philippines Government Affairs and Public Policy Head Yves Gonzalez said the firm intends to help the DTI in achieving its targets listed under the e-commerce road map through this initiative.
Under the new road map on e-commerce, the government is eyeing to get 100,000 MSMEs ready to transact with consumers online. However, Trade Secretary Ramon M. Lopez last year said this number might be increased due to the momentum the Philippines is gaining in terms of available technologies.
As such, the DTI is looking at improving the target to 500,000 digitally ready MSMEs by 2022.
With this, Lopez envisions hiking the contribution of e-commerce to the economy to 50 percent of the country’s GDP. At present, the objective is to make e-commerce contribute at least 25 percent to GDP by this year, from 10 percent based on data from i-Metrics Asia-Pacific Corp.
According to Google Philippines, the number of searches for products, stores and services “near me”—proximity to the user—have jumped by 250 percent in the last three years.
The MSME caravan, therefore, seeks to train business owners on how they can be listed on Google My Business. This will make them discoverable online to users searching for goods and services that their firm might be offering.
Google My Business is a free-only listing on Google Maps and Searches to help MSMEs link with more consumers in the digital space. It also helps businesses build their online presence, control their business information and create free web site and posts.
On the other hand, the Primer app—downloadable on the Google Play Store—is a free mobile software that has courses on digital marketing skills.
1 comment
This is great news that there will be training sessions among MSME. Thanks for sharing!