By: Kimberly Ramkhalawan
Contributor
kramkhalawan@caribmagplus.com
February 12, 2021
The COVID-19 pandemic has pushed businesses across the world to come up with innovative measures to keep viable with the change in tides.
In The Bahamas, its no different, except, its an archipelago of hundreds of islands and calls for a cultural shift in the way it does business.
Reluctance by many residents who are wary of using this “new way” of doing business in order to access goods and services is being met with some challenges. Cultural challenges business groups such as Cable Bahamas, the Small Business Development Centre (SBDC) and the Bank of Bahamas (BOB) say they are working at combating.
In its “Think Beyond” Webinar Series, panelists from these agencies say meeting these challenges are quite doable even as the country has commenced its transition into the digital currency world.
Citing that transactions are already done on foreign webpages such as Amazon, the idea of accessing products online should not be a remote one among Bahamians.
For businesses it’s about implementing these shifts in gear through campaigns targeted towards its clients. The BOB is known for being one of the few banks that continues to have that “brick and mortar” space among the islands. However, its corporate manager of business development, David Cox, cites the 2008 global fallout as being the start for the BOB’s digital transformation, and with COVID present, this push towards ensuring its customers utilize this service now more than ever, has taken the shape of public service announcements and education campaigns, assuring them of the safety offered through banking online while affording them convenience of banking anywhere, anytime.
Speaking on behalf of Cable Bahamas, Aliv’s chief commercial officer, Gravette Brown, says one point it made in its introduction of the mobile service Aliv, was to ensure its customers had to purchase its airtime via its mobile app as opposed to phone cards sold at physical locations. And while she admits that in its initial stages it took some convincing of Bahamians that digital was needed, doing this has worked in their favour, keeping funds within The Bahamas and being one of the local companies that already set that digital culture in motion.
With regards to its remote operations, Brown says Cable Bahamas had ensured its ability to stay functioning during natural disasters such as Hurricane Dorian, a practice which enabled the transition of working remotely among its team members with ease at the start of the Pandemic.
But the blows dealt following several years of back-to-back disastrous hurricanes such as Dorian, Matthew and Irma, the need to propel economic growth among its islanders once again is being driven by the government’s Small Business Development Centers’ Access Accelerators.
Nicholas Higgs, deputy director of the SBDC, said while the norm is to come into their offices as persons look to kick start their business, giving financial advice and guidance on starting up a business now has to be done digital, something he says Hurricane Dorian became a catalyst for among the islands. He is now advocating for persons to utilize the internet as a resource tool for data collection, along with free apps such as WAVE that formalize this kind of research for trading and making decisions for your business.
An interesting pattern emerging from the pandemic has been the need assumed among businesses that they are required to establish their own app in order to stay viable during this time. However, this too can be a costly investment especially to small business owners. Ms Brown notes, that while it is a commendable effort, not having the right support can lead to a flop in the app, something she says her company notes that can be unforgiving in the Bahamian culture if the app does not work at first try by the customer, thereby making them wary to trying technology any further.
This can result in making it harder for businesses to convince the public to patronize them in the future. Her solution she says is to find apps that are popular and easy to use that facilitate trading and banking for goods and services such as Paypal and other verification sites.
She adds that collaborative push messages together also help to build trust among consumers that transactions and doing business online might not be so bad after all, as it gives credibility to platforms and business sites. Ms Brown says once this is done, the future of trade within the Bahamas can create a greater impact surpassing its physical size.
You can look out for more Think Beyond Seminars on via the Cable Bahamas’ Business Solutions Linkedin page to find out innovative ways in which you can aid your business to grow during these times.