Industry Voice: Why forward-thinking partnerships are essential to SME success

SMEs are under pressure to optimise processes, tools, and systems to obtain and retain customers. These needs must be met across a wide range of industries to keep pace with competition and support ongoing digital acceleration. SMEs that are slow to transform and using intelligence will be left behind, and given that they act as important economic pillar, supporting this development is important.

According to Huawei, in the next five years, 90% of SMEs will focus on digitalisation and intelligence to build core competitiveness, so now is the time to build the right partnerships to make this possible.

Understandably, strategy is a huge component of this. The capabilities of R&D and sales and service systems are integral to commercial success. But how can enterprises ensure they are partnering with those that continuously develop products and solutions that meet changing requirements? Where can partners find the relevant materials to support their product and solution journeys?

During Huawei's recent commercial market summit, "Join Hands with Partners to Accelerate Intelligence for SMEs", the opportunities for businesses in this space was demonstrated. Developed and evaluated with specific business scenarios in mind, Huawei released over 60 solutions in the first half of this year with more than 20 to follow later this year.

Solutions built with scenarios in mind

Custom-build solutions for all industries were touted as a major development for the commercial market to make the most of intelligence. Lots of SMEs are facing industry-specific challenges, which prevents them from keeping pace with progress.

To address this, Huawei has been involved in incubating more than 2500 industry solutions from electronic mine seals to intelligent question libraries in education, and from intelligent electric power examinations to quality inspections for production and manufacturing.

Speaking at Huawei's recent commercial market summit, Huawei executive Peter Zhang said:

"Huawei always adheres to platform openness and partner priority to provide services for customers and partners in thousands of industries, solutions that are affordable, good, and reliable."

It is predicted that SMEs will continue to introduce intelligent technologies to improve their core competitiveness, demonstrating the value in partnering with those that offer intelligent, specifically designed solutions.

A key example of this is Connectoway. The digital IT and telecom solutions provider partnered with Huawei to add value to customers and help them with their digital transformation plans. Using Huawei's solutions, Connectoway was able to help customers build better networks and modernise the Brazilian ISP market.

With this project, the specific needs and requirements were established, and the appropriate digital technologies were laid out in accordance. This shows the importance of partnering with the right support systems to strengthen the foundations of and supplement existing investments.

Dedicated support systems

Similarly, devised to facilitate cooperation between Huawei and partners while seamlessly collating materials, product information, and logistics, Huawei have instated three key IT platforms and the eFly app, a mobile online platform for partners in the commercial market, in 2023. In the first half of this year, Huawei saw significant increases in both its overall revenue in the commercial market and the number of partners and clients it serves. Bob Chen, Vice President of Huawei Enterprise BG and President of Commercial & Distribution Business shared that, with the help of partners and clients, Huawei has achieved initial achievements in transforming the commercial market.

Their partner marketing workbench platform provides marketing materials designed to quickly reach customers. The bidding and network design centre platform compiles bidding qualifications and documents alongside network design tools and remote expert support to improve the efficiency of bidding processes, improving the chances of timely project success. This platform also ensures partners can register products, query lead times, and get status updates. The third and final platform, the quick configuration channel, uses product selection tools and scenario-based order configuration tools to help partners seize relevant opportunities and specific products to suit their business and clients. This provides rapid access to configuration quotations, order statuses, and after-sales service trouble ticket information.

With these features, customer requirements are consistently met and backed by partner solutions in a way that is tailored to needs. This is particularly important today as SMEs must focus on developing digital and intelligent practices.

The significant opportunity for SMEs

The 4A architecture championed by Huawei, includes business architecture, applications, data, and technical architecture to form the building blocks of digitalisation. Working with partners to establish insights into these four areas allows deep understanding of partner requirements and the associated solutions needed. Owing to the large number of diverse partners that have benefitted from such an architecture, solutions are already matched and optimised for specific use cases and business scenarios.

Huawei say they will continue to build end-to-end digital IT support systems based on partners' business journeys and industry segments to support the acceleration of the commercial market.

For more information on the products and solutions on offer as well as Huawei's innovative practices visit https://e.huawei.com/en/industries/commercial-market