FILIPINO micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) should tap cloud-based platforms to fill in the gap for their businesses that were affected by the Covid-19 pandemic resulting in major disruptions to their processes, transactions and networking, according to a seasoned Filipino technology executive.
Kiu Philippines President Junie Pama told BusinessMirror in an e-mail interview there will be a major shift in how enterprises will conduct their transactions in the so-called new normal.
Pama said Kiu pioneered the idea of software in the cloud for the emerging markets and creating impact using their technology to help MSMEs in the Asean who are typically rejected by traditional financial institutions for loans and credit.
Kiu was first launched in Vietnam in 2015 and is used by more than 25,000 SMEs in other countries such as Cambodia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Bangladesh and Thailand where Kiu also has local offices.
Kiu Philippines is the local subsidiary of Hanoi, Vietnam-based technology company Kiu. In Vietnamese, “kiu” means bridge. In response to the current business challenges, Pama said Kiu has been promoting to the local market the Business Management Platform (BMP).
It is a cloud-based system of integrated applications to manage business and automate back-office functions for customer relations management, sales, purchases, inventory management, manufacturing, human resource and accounting.
“The BMP is designed to simplify daily work, automate processes, transfer data continuously across departments and ensure data security. Your data is secured and controlled only by you,” Pama explained.
Through the BMP, digitalizing business processes ensures an enterprise can achieve efficiency resulting to productivity and ultimately profitability.
Pama pointed out the BMP is also cost-efficient. As a subscription-based model, a user will only pay a minimum amount on a monthly basis to maintain the Kiu services. He said the BMP can also be deployed in less than a month from the first day of engagement, compared to other platforms which will take months to implement and years for the service provider to integrate with existing system.
Kiu, Pama noted, is scalable, as it can start with three to five users and expand up to thousands of users depending on requirement and needs of company. The total cost of ownership is minimal as a user will only need a personal computer, laptop, tablet or smartphone.
To protect against obsolescence, Pama said they will provide upgrades on a regular basis at no cost to the subscriber. Moreover, it has free automatic software updates as part of service to the client.
He said connectivity is not a problem as long as a user has the device and Internet connectivity.
Since it is cloud-based, Pama said Kiu is apt for disaster recovery because it’s not dependent on traditional IT infrastructure. He added cloud-based solutions ensure the sustainability of business with minimal cost impact to its implementation.
Meanwhile, the Kiu Credit Scoring platform analyzes fraud, transactional data and millions of historical loans over the past 14 years in conjunction with predictive analysis to create a credit score so banks or MFIs can loan money to MSME or SME instantly. Kiu mitigates risks by using the data collected through Kiu BMP and other data sources to develop data analytics that allows for a credit rating of SME clients.
Finally, Pama pointed out that using Kiu is as simple as “plug and play.” To ensure a smooth transition, to digital from manual processses, Pama said the business consultants will connect to the company for guidance to ensure businesses are on the right track.