Global software giant Microsoft has launched an online hub to provide South African small and mid-sized enterprises (SMEs) access to free products and services from the company.
Microsoft chief operating officer (COO) Kevin Turner unveiled the website Southafrica.biz4afrika.com, at the software firm’s offices in Johannesburg.
Southafrica.biz4afrika.com is specifically designed to aggregate both IT and non-IT resources for local SMEs.
The website has nine resource categories where assistance is available: finance and insurance, accounting, legal, marketing, administration, business services, business opportunities, technology and people.
The hub is also expected to help connect SMEs with existing online commercial marketplaces through which they can sell their own products or services.
The baseline services offered are free and relevant for South African SMEs looking to bring their business online and improve their general competitiveness, says Microsoft.
Using the service, SMEs can also get their businesses online for free for the first year.
This includes a free .co.za domain, a free website, as well as free email and collaboration tools.
The initiative is a collaboration among Microsoft, mobile operator Vodacom, the National Small Business Chamber (NSBC) and the Small Business Development Agency (SEDA).
The opening of the Biz4Afrika hub is furthermore ‘a strategic component’ of Microsoft’s 4Afrika Initiative announced earlier this year, in which the global software company aims to bring one million African SMEs online in three years’ time.
The launch of Biz4Afrika also follows research released last month by the Boston Consulting Group (BCG), which said that tech-savvy SMEs created twice as many new jobs and grew revenues 15 percentage points faster over the past three years than SMEs using little technology.
“Our objective is to help more SMEs transition to, and benefit from, modern IT so they can improve their overall competitiveness,” said Turner.
“Our commitments under the 4Afrika banner are focused on actively engaging in Africa’s economic development, and for SMEs, this means providing training on how to apply technology to their business and helping them understand how they can benefit from a broad range of available devices and services.”
Microsoft South Africa managing director Mteto Nyati said the research "underlined Microsoft’s belief that the best way of addressing unemployment in South Africa, and Africa, was by creating small businesses."
“If we can help small companies to succeed in the first three-five years of their lives, we will help grow job creation and economic development significantly,” said Nyati.
“By doing this, we’re supporting government’s national priorities of creating jobs, growing skills and giving people meaningful work, while investing in local communities to help remove some of the systematic barriers that hold SMEs back.”
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