Spain Launches the 2021-2025 SME Digitalization Plan
Spain’s government has approved the 2021-2025 SME digitalization plan. Over 465 billion euros will be invested by the public sector and will directly impact 1.5 million SMEs. The objective of this plan is to integrate digital technologies into the business models of SMEs in Spain as a catalyst for change that will help face future and current crises like COVID-19.
The 2021-2025 SME digitalization plan is a response to the Digital Agenda Spain 2025 which includes the digitalization of SMEs as one of its ten priorities.
Small and medium companies in Spain must modernize and more widely digitalize their business processes. There are many important areas to develop that could make companies more resilient and flexible during crises including: e-commerce, cloud services, and big data analysis.
The introduction of digital technology will allow SMEs to be competitive with new business models adopted by larger firms and will improve their productivity. Digitalization will also help to diminish social, geographical and gender disparities in Spain.
2021-2025 SME digitalization plan
The plans objectives are the following:
- To establish a set of scalable basic digitalization programs for SMEs leveraging public private partnerships.
- To promote entrepreneurial and management training in digital processes to improve SME transformation, growth, productivity, and International competitiveness.
- To promote creative disruption and entrepreneurship in the digital market so that SMEs and startups can take advantage of opportunities in the green and digital economy.
- To establish adequate sectorial digitalization programs and to promote specific characteristics in the tourism and trade sectors with an emphasis on environmental practices.
- To reduce the gender gap in the digital sector.
The plan is structured horizontally and includes 5 main principals and 16 measures. The five principals include: basic digitalization, change management support, creative disruption, entrepreneurship, sectorial digitalization and coordination of efficiencies and reforms.
Digital Toolkit Program
Amongst the most important measures contemplated by the plan the Digital Toolkit stands out. It is focused on the basic digitalization of SMEs with an initial investment of 3 billion euros between 2021 and 2023.
The Digital Toolkit package targets solutions provided in service mode that would like to implement digital relationships based on electronic data interchange, these include:
- The digitalization of relationships with public administrations and clients.
- The development of paperless internal processes.
- The implementation of electronic invoicing.
- The effective implementation of e-commerce. The government’s goal is to increase e-commerce to 25% of SME business, compared to the current volume which is under 10%.
The Digital Toolkit Program includes enabling tools, training, web sites, ERP management systems, CRM management systems, internet sales, digital marketing systems and many more.
EDICOM a technological partner to help digitalize your business
EDICOM is a specialist electronic data interchange solution (EDI), an essential process in the digitalization of a company.
This function’s primary purpose is to adapt digital solutions to the needs of clients. For this reason, EDICOM develops full scalable solutions which can be adapted to the many variables faced by companies: business volumes, sectorial particularities, and business digitalization levels of clients and suppliers, as well as many others.
