Slovakia lacks startup unicorns. Will CRM and the cloud pull them out of their misery?
Currently, Slovakia lags significantly behind the global leader and its European neighbors, not only from the point of view of digitization, but also in terms of startup culture.
So far, our country does not have a single startup “unicorn”, i.e. a start-up company whose value is 1 billion million. There are already more than a thousand such companies in the world. The Czech Republic and Ukraine already have their “unicorn”, not to mention Great Britain and Germany, where the number of such startups can already be counted by dozens.* According to Enehano, the work of Slovak companies is that they do not fully use all available digital tools, including CRM. This business software is used in Slovakia by just over 20% of large companies, and it is often unknown even for smaller companies, although it can help them.
Lack of technology hinders growth
Starting and running a technology company is difficult. While companies in the world are advancing at rocket speed thanks to digitization and the number of “unicorn” startups with a value of billions of dollars is increasing, in Slovakia these mythical animals with horns have not yet symbolically galloped off. The appetite and willingness of foreign investors to invest money in start-up companies – unlike in the Czech Republic or Ukraine – is still not forthcoming. Although promising and dynamic growing companies whose value is worth billions of millions, there are more than 1,000 in the world today, are still wishful thinking for the local scene. However, the problem is not financial and personnel limits or the fear of a risky, no potential profitable business. According to the Enehano company, frequent obstacles slowing down the growth of start-up companies are not only inappropriately installed processes, but also ignorance of today’s modern technologies in the field of marketing, sales and customer care. “Today, cloud is of particular interest to startups, which enable them to very quickly translate the idea into practical use. However, further sales of products or services are a big support. In addition to limited financing options, Slovak startups in general often have a problem with establishing themselves on the market. Today, there are software solutions that are again built on the basis of cloud services (Software-as-a-Service) and can significantly improve, streamline and automate processes related to any interaction with the customer. It is important to realize that an area like marketing and that area of care are interconnected and it is necessary to find out when deploying any SW tool. Eduard Gers, digitization expert from Enehano.
Enterprise CRM does not belong only to corporations
The digitization expert sees the future of Slovak companies, which also have the potential of C domestic gray average, RM solutions. There is a large series of applications from various suppliers on the market, while one of the largest, which also provides free platforms, is Salesforce, which has offered its solutions exclusively in the cloud since the beginning of its business. “Starting businesses often make the mistake of assuming that everything is ruled by Excel support. They believe that CRM is a tool for medium or large businesses. However, that is not true. CRM is equally valuable to small startups that are resource-constrained. Thanks to customer relationship management software, even startups have complete oversight of the entire spectrum of their business processes and can work more efficiently. An appropriately chosen SW tool at the beginning of a business can grow together with a startup, which eliminates the need to implement a CRM solution in the later stages of the company’s growth, when the costs of implementation are an order of magnitude higher.” Gers says. If the CRM is also in the cloud, from an expert’s point of view, there is no need to prepare any hardware infrastructure, it is quickly available, and it is also not financially demanding for small companies. For larger companies, of course, integrations are necessary, but thanks to the existing installed base, a number of ready-made solutions are available.
Quality CRM, as well as the use of cloud technologies, will be an absolute necessity for European countries in a few years. The European Commission, which presented the vision and methods of the digital transformation of Europe by 2030, also put pressure on it. According to it, three out of four companies should use cloud computing services, which are necessary not only from the point of view of growth, but also to maintain the competitiveness of companies.