When big businesses help smaller SMEs

For small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), going against the big players can seem almost impossible. But what if the big players can help these SMEs to not only survive but thrive?
In this week’s Money Talks, Andrea Heng sits down with Yee Wee Tang, managing director of Grab Singapore, and Xu Wenshan from SkillsFuture Singapore to share about the SkillsFuture Queen Bee networks and how industry leaders can further support SMEs.  
This episode is brought to you by SkillsFuture Singapore.  
Here’s an excerpt from the conversation: 
Andrea Heng, host: 
What’s in it for Grab (to be a Queen Bee)?
Yee Wee Tang, managing director of Grab Singapore:
Many of these SMEs are on our platform. 90 per cent of them are on our platform and we see them (struggled) through COVID, and now hopefully COVID is gone, but they still have … issues like manpower etc.
F&B merchants become more innovative. They come up with new food menus on a quarterly or half yearly basis, and the data insights that we provide them also help them to sell more, come up with better menus (and be) a bit more targeted. And so again, it helps our platform. So we really see this as a very win-win situation for us, and as well as our merchant partners.
Andrea:
It’s a nice little ecosystem that you’ve built for yourself there … So Wen Shan, what are some of the feedback you’ve received from the other Queen Bees, and why would a company bother to spend time and resources on their own part, just to be a mentor? 
Xu Wenshan, SkillsFuture Singapore:
Let’s use Sheng Siong, who’s one of our Queen Bees as an example. For Queen Bees in the supply chain, they are looking at ensuring that the network is resilient. So they have a network of SMEs. For Sheng Siong, it could be (companies) that they purchase the supplies from. 
Let’s say at Sheng Shiong, (they) want to introduce more digitalisation (such as) e-invoicing (but they) can’t do it alone, because if (they) do e-invoicing but everybody else is on paper and pen, it defeats the purpose. So essentially, one of the areas that Sheng Siong is looking at is to introduce e-invoicing to their suppliers as well … so that the whole network uses (the same technology). 
So Queen Bees can think about how (can these) programmes add that strategic value to them as a company, as an employer, and how would they step up and contribute to the network that they are trying to build.
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