Some Ghanaian entrepreneurs have underscored the need for micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMES) to leverage e-commerce and innovation to improve their business ventures or operations.

Particularly, they held the view that such a move would help them to flourish even under the most challenging circumstances, recent being the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.

Sharing their experiences at the 29th MTN Business World Executive Breakfast meeting held virtually,on Wednesday, October 7, 2020, the entrepreneurs said they were compelled to come out with innovations to sell electronically, a move which they said had paid off.

The meeting was on the theme, “The Changing Face of Retail In Ghana: Scaling successfully with Innovation and E-commerce”.

Sharing experiences

The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of The Hair Senta, Mrs Gwen Gyimah Addo, said upon introspection during COVID-19, she decided to leverage social media to scale up, saying “I realised that it was either, I am in or I am out so I decided to go all out,” she said.

Mrs Addo said it was important for entrepreneurs to understand and identify their business models - who they are serving.

“Leverage a lot on social media to sustain the interest in your products. Trust is key in assuring customers that electronic payment is safer”.

“The more you deliver on promise, the more customers trust you. Convenience is for the customer so you need to go out of your way and serve them,” she said.

She said it was good to import best practices in e-commerce, but it was important to align them with local knowledge – study the people, the market and how the system functioned.

An entrepreneur who deals in coffee value addition, the CEO and Founder of Kawa Moka Coffee, Ms Emi-Beth Quantson, said the limitations on movement during the peak of the pandemic was a challenge to her company’s activities.

“Getting raw materials from the farm to deliver to a customer was difficult and there was quite a drop in sales. A core principle of the company is ensuring that we are providing access to markets for our farmers. So, we thought through to create content that attracts, appeals and demonstrates to the customer the different uses of our products and things picked up,” he said.

According to Ms Quantson, aggregation was a big factor so businesses should endeavour to join other platforms to sell.

“E-commerce is the future and we should think of how we can leverage that in the African context,” she said.

For his part, the CEO of Hubtel, Mr Alex Bram, said before the pandemic, his company was sending short message service (SMS) traditionally to their customers.

“We saw an uptick in messages just before the lockdown, thats about a 40 per cent rise, but during the lockdown, we saw between 40 and 50 per cent dip in sales in our retail business. Food sales was up to about 400 per cent,” he said.

He said a lot of personal effects from some retailers on their platform were ordered through e-commerce.

“So, if you are running a business today and you are not considering people paying you online using communication tools available and new tools being built by IT companies’, they are building you are missing out,” he noted.

He said that “customers are now more awake. We are seeing new customers every day and it means something significant is shaping up. People are looking at payment methods as more convenient”.

Mr Bram said e-commerce went with innovation and presented an empty plate for a whole new world.

“A level of boldness is needed to innovate. To measure customer experience, talk to them and learn from them. E-commerce presents a big world of opportunity to deal with customers,” he said.

The CEO of Skin Gourmet Limited, Ms Violet Amoabeng, also said COVID-19 helped her company to step up its social media game.

“COVID-19 is a challenge to overcome. Either you sit up or you are going to sleep. You need a website to explain to the customer why he/she should buy your products. Reach out to them,” she said.

Govt intervention

The Executive Director of the National Board for Small Scale Industries (NBSSI), Mrs Kosi Yankey-Aryeh, said in the past six months, COVID-19 had changed everything worldwide, including the NBSSI as a government institution.

She said as an institution mandated to strengthen and grow MSMES in Ghana, technology was considered important and that had, therefore, incorporated in its work.

“It was a great opportunity to provide for the MSMES through helping them to digitise their operations and forming partnerships to ensure they get the needed resources.

“Access to finance is also an important tool for programming and which the government is providing GH¢750 million to help businesses get back on their feet and innovate,” she said.

She added that innovation was a major change the pandemic had brought resulting in over 800,000 plus applicants seeking to innovate.