Business Administration, Management, and Operations Commons^™

Saving Grace: Digitization To Stay Or Address Crisis?, Smitha Vasudevan

University of South Florida (USF) M3 Publishing

As the successive waves of lockdown brought the shutters down on all business, small and medium businesses have had to address acute loss of business. The disruptive changes occasioned by Covid 19 pandemic has resulted in the use of digital technologies to mitigate the challenges (Richter, 2020). This paper examines how small retail businesses have integrated digital tools to manage the crisis, and whether this will add long term value for their business. Digitization offers SMEs opportunities to improve efficiency of operations and effectiveness of their customer relationships. Covid-19 has been a shock to the sector, and had a rapid …