10.09.2025
Are you facing the challenge of (further) digitizing your SME? These are the seven areas of action that you should discuss in your company and with your team.
The seven areas of action for digital transformation show how SMEs can take action to drive their digitization forward
Artificial intelligence (AI) opens up new potential but requires clean data management and appropriate processes
With the workshop canvas, you can activate your employees’ knowledge and develop ideas and projects for your digital transformation together
Digital transformation is both a challenge and an opportunity for SMEs. The seven areas of action for digital transformation show what SMEs can focus on to remain competitive. But which key questions should companies address specifically – and what do they need to do? Marc K. Peter, Professor of Digital Business and AI, provides the answers in this post.
Customers are at the heart of all digital strategies. Successful companies understand their needs, expectations and priorities, and develop services designed for specific markets and target groups.
How can our SME ensure a consistent customer focus, provide personalized services and make use of digital communication/sales channels and customer portals?
With co-creation, SMEs involve their customers in the development and design of services and products as early as possible. This trend can be seen not only in companies, but also in public administration. Municipalities, for example, take their citizens with them on the development journey right from the start – such as when developing an app. This opens up new perspectives and increases customer retention.
New technologies open up opportunities to improve communication and collaboration, as well as products, services and internal processes. These include apps, platforms, enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions and other software solutions or robotics. New technologies are used differently depending on the company’s sector and market performance.
Which new technologies will be crucial to our organization’s success in the coming years – and how can we use them in a targeted manner to create added value for our customers and our company?
With the increased use of digital communication and collaboration solutions, cybersecurity is becoming a major issue for SMEs.
Well-founded decisions cannot be made without data. To successfully implement customer focus, new business models, efficient processes and digital marketing, SMEs need an integrated and networked database and intelligent analysis methods. This combination makes it possible to gain new relevant insights and take strategically sound decisions. At the same time, there is a growing need for a flexible IT infrastructure that is accessible anytime and anywhere. This is why many companies rely on cloud- and web-based solutions and make targeted investments in these technologies.
Are we already using our data and IT systems to their full potential – networked, secure, scalable and with a clear cloud roadmap for the future?
Today, data is used not only for process automation but increasingly for artificial intelligence (AI). This is becoming ever more important, but it only works if the company’s data is prepared in such a way that it can be used to feed and train the AI models. This in turn requires corresponding computing power from the cloud. In this sense, AI is actually a part of new technologies, but it doesn’t work without the cloud.
New technologies are prompting companies to reassess their competencies and services and create new digital services along their value chain. To do so, they make use of new platforms and communication channels and enter into partnerships to shape forward-looking business and income models.
How can we future-proof our business model through digitization, new platforms, partnerships and innovative services, expand our market potential and generate money as a result?
Many SMEs are still developing their digital strategy and introducing or testing new income models such as subscription or rental models.
Processes should be standardized, streamlined, faster and more efficient and, where possible, digitized and automated.
What processes can we digitize and automate and how?
AI is making the topic of automation even more important for SMEs – we could also talk about a second wave of automation.
Digitization is changing management principles, influencing corporate culture and leading to new working models and organizational forms.
How do we promote creativity and innovation and how do we work (together) to share knowledge and lead teams in an agile manner?
As a result of the coronavirus crisis, there is greater flexibility in working models in terms of working hours and locations (keyword: home office). This also means that SMEs are rethinking the topic of management or have already done so.
Digital marketing is creating new and partially automated approaches in the areas of sales, communication, customer service and relationship management.
What is our new, holistic digital marketing strategy (marketing, distribution, sales, customer service)?
AI is playing a greater role in content creation and marketing is becoming increasingly automated.
In data-driven AI, data is used to train models. The main challenge for SMEs lies in data management. Data is often “dispersed” in different systems and locations. To be able to use data-based AI at all, SMEs need a data concept as a foundation. This raises questions such as: where is our data? From which sources can we obtain high-quality data? Which data is out of date? In which processes and systems do I need the data today − for example, in marketing or our accounting system? Does the data need special protection? etc.
If you as a company don’t have your data under control, you can’t use data-driven AI.
The magic AI formula is: process management + new technologies + data = AI potential. One example: an SME examines its customer enquiry processes (process management area of action). It determines that many enquiries are processed and answered manually: information on products and prices is retrieved from many online catalogues, and customer responses are sent in a personal e-mail. The digital tools used for this purpose (new technologies area of action) are the e-mail program, customer management and word-processing software. Data from various online catalogues is collected manually and combined into a reply drafted using word processing (data area of action).
The discussion shows that this process could be supported by an AI tool (= AI potential), in which the various data sources – such as catalogues and previous e-mail requests with their answers – could be used as a database for training a large language model (LLM), which in future would automatically read the e-mail requests with an AI bot (AI agent) and prepare a possible answer for customer service staff. This suggested answer with all product information would still be checked manually by a team member, but the main tasks would be supported by AI or carried out with the greatest possible automation.
Would you like to get started in your SME right away and identify potential, ideas and projects for your digital master plan? With the workshop canvas, your employees’ valuable knowledge is incorporated directly into the strategy – and your company benefits from the expertise of the entire organization.
The seven areas of action for digital transformation are the result of the “SME transformation” study initiated by Marc K. Peter, published by the University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland (FHNW) and sponsored by PostFinance. The study is currently being validated. The study results also have an international impact: two UK publishers, Financial Times Publishing and Sage, have incorporated the seven areas of action into a practical handbook/textbook.
Marc K. Peter is Professor of Digital Business and AI at Rochester-Bern Executive Programs, University of Bern.
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