ACCA launches online hub to support SMEs

ACCA (Association of Chartered Certified Accountants) is celebrating this year’s Micro-, Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (MSME) Day by paying tribute to small businesses globally. 

Small businesses have taken a massive hit due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but still have a crucial role to play in the economic recovery. SMEs represent about 90% of businesses and more than 50% of employment worldwide. To continue playing this essential role in creating job opportunities as well as enhancing livelihoods, small businesses rely heavily on support for access to finance, information, and environments conducive to growth. Accountants have increasingly become trusted advisors to small businesses during such turbulent times. The COVID-19 crisis has reconfirmed this vital role and it has also accelerated other smaller accountancy firms to transform further. 

As such, ACCA has almost 50,000 members working in public practice with a majority of those working in small and medium sized practices (SMPs). A core part of their strategy is to ensure they use the power of their connections to offer support, guidance and advice for accountants working as SMPs, and their SME clients. This pandemic has highlighted even more the fragility of small businesses that are a lifeline to global economies. And that’s where ACCA’s global SMP community comes in to help businesses develop new revenue streams, transform their business models, support growth and share best practices. 

ACCA has created various global, practical initiatives and resources to support the SMP community in their transformational journey that is so crucial in supporting sustainable recovery of the small business sector.

In addition, ACCA recently launched two global initiatives: Practice Connect – an online hub with insights, resources and innovative tools to help small practitioners stay relevant in a fast-changing business landscape; and The Practice Room – is a virtual SMP community where 15 international practitioner members host a series of discussions weekly. Within these sessions, SMPs exchange ideas to ensure that as a community they provide the best support to SMEs worldwide.  ACCA South Asia Cluster Head Nilusha Ranasinghe stated, “The celebration of the International SME Day is important to raise public awareness of their contribution to sustainable development and the global economy. This is especially so when SMEs are struggling because of the pandemic that has exposed their vulnerabilities such as supply chain and operations, client experience and employee engagement. They need to recreate themselves to overcome this difficult period, and SMPs have become emergency support services to them: cashflow management, planning business resilience, navigating them through government support schemes, and transforming their businesses.”

She added, “During the crisis, ACCA has rolled out the Practice Room and Practice Connect on a timely basis. Practice Room is the dedicated space designed to connect SMPs all over the world. As small and medium sized businesses start to come through a prolonged tough period, they face a situation where they have three distinct priorities; the first is financial recovery to rebuild their reserves and invest in their growth. The third priority is designing and integrating a robust environmental strategy to support the combating of the climate crisis and reduce their own business risk. 

“It’s clear the future recovery needs to be a sustainable one which will need brave leadership which takes the long-term view. Business leaders will be reliant on informed counsel from their support network, including their accountants. Through the Practice Room we have had the opportunity to discuss as a group practical actions that we can take to provide this support. The Practice Room has benefited from bringing in experts outside of finance to share their thoughts and it is exactly this holistic thinking which will help the finance community support their clients through this recovery phase and beyond. 

“Now more than ever, via initiatives such as the Practice Room and Practice Connect, ACCA empowers accountants across the world and provides them with the proper skillset and mindset to support SMEs in the multi-faceted challenges they are dealing with, as they steer their way through the COVID-19 pandemic.”