In honor of its commitment to ensuring the digital capabilities of today’s small to medium entrepreneurs (SMEs), PLDT SME Nation has declared the entire month of July as Small Business Month.

Small Business Month is a first of its kind revolution which aims to empower and enable small businesses to dominate the digital space by educating them on useful business practices, providing them with financial tools and equipping them with digital business solutions to better serve the evolving customer.

PLDT Executive Vice President and ePLDT President and CEO Eric Alberto said, “The way to do business today cuts across brick and mortar establishments and mobile and online platforms. Because of this our customers are more empowered in their respective markets. It’s an exciting albeit challenging world out there, and as the country’s leading enterprise technology services provider, we have take it upon us to ensure that the country’s small businesses are ready for this new age”.

PLDT SME Nation’s Small Business Month will feature activities including the Empowering the Small Business! Caravan – a forum to bring small businesses to the digital era by providing them with the right solutions. This is in partnership with the Philippine Retailers Association, Go Negosyo, PNB and Google.

Also in the pipeline is the launch of digital tools specifically for small businesses so they are mobile-and web-ready to capture the new breed of digital customers.

To recognize the role of creative, hardworking and inspiring Filipino Entrepreneurs, PLDT SME Nation is set to unveil the digital counterpart of its long running MVP Bossing Awards-The Bozz Awards.

The Bozz Awards will honor the achievements and potential of new generation bossings (aged 40 and below) who have been nurtured and bred by the culture of the digital age. This campaign calls for the nation’s participation as nominations and voting are crowd-sourced online. Ultimately, it hopes to encourage more Filipinos to become their own boss by becoming entrepreneurs themselves.

“There’s now way to go but digital”, PLDT First Vice President and Head of SME Business Kat Luna-Abelarde said. “Customers are mobile and they go online to do just about everything-buy, read reviews, air their concerns, advocate a brand. The real and virtual worlds are more converged, now more than ever. With the launch of Small Business Month, we want to be enablers by providing them with the relevant tools and services to thrive as they embrace the digital revolution.”

Log on to pldtsme-nation.com.ph for more information on the activities for Small Business Month.

Moms who love to do business or is an owner of their small businesses would definitely be more supercharged with what these three industry leaders have cooked up. PLDT SME Nation, Samsung Philippines and Microsoft Philippines joined forces to bring the best technology to supercharge small and medium enterprise (SME). And since Philippines is fast growing with the number of digital, social and mobile users creates unprecedented opportunities for 800,000 strong small and medium enterprise market and Mommies is a few percentage active of that enterprise are very much eager reach more. There are over 34 million Facebook users, over 10 million Twitter followers and with over 44 million Filipino internet users.
So Mommies’ small businesses need to reach the widest network that we could. A bundle of services, tools and technologies could be of great help. And with this, PLDT SME Nation partners with Samsung & Microsoft Philippines in creating innovative business solutions that will enable entrepreneurs to run their business better, grow faster, be more globally competitive and engage with the country’s digital, social and mobile population.
The first solution for SMEs was the premium and faster fixed and wireless broadband running on the latest fiber and LTE network. These broadband offerings provide unlimited access which give entrepreneurs the ability to continuously conduct online activities without the fear of bandwidth throttling. These services also feature committed information rates or CIR, which guarantee minimum bandwidth speeds for businesses and a static IP used to power up their websites and enable faster inter-office data transfers. If fiber and LTE network can’t reach SMEs then this robust network and nation-widest wireless and satellite service can ensure that wherever they are.
These new broadband packages come with supercharged flexible freebies ranging from relevant and business enabling Cloud Solutions such as Microsoft Office 365 and PLDT Cloud apps for video monitoring, asset tracking, POS, infrastructure and more. SMEs will also be able to get for free and choose the latest array of smart devices from Samsung Philippines and High Definition (HD) TV content from Cignal.

In a recent event entitled “Growing your Business in the Digital Age”, PLDT SME Nation together with two other industry leaders, Samsung and Microsoft, announced their partnership to create and introduce groundbreaking technologies and tools that will enable SMEs to efficiently manage their businesses anytime, anywhere.
PLDT Executive Vice President and ePLDT President and CEO Eric Alberto highlighted the significance of the partnership saying, “This collaboration and synergy among today’s leaders in the telecommunications industry ushers in a new era of enablement for the small and medium enterprise market segment.” And he also added that “Through this strategic partnership, SMEs will have access to game-changing business tools such as faster and nationwide fixed and wireless broadband solutions, latest gadgets and devices and relevant collaboration cloud applications which should ultimately lead to higher levels of operational efficiencies, expanded market reach, higher profit margin levels, and in the process create higher economic multiplier for our country”.
This technology’s capability of PLDT SME Nation was showcased during the event where they invited several bloggers from Cebu and Manila to virtually take part of the press conference from remote locations using Microsoft Office 365. Bloggers like Ms. Noemi Dado, Jane Uymatiao, Rod Magaru, Mike Soon, Ryan San Juan and more.
To signify the formalization of the partnership among the three companies Alberto was joined on stage by PLDT First Vice President and Head of SME Business Kat Luna-Abelarde, Samsung Philippines Managing Director Harry Lee, Samsung Philippines Business Manager James Kwon, Samsung Philippines Enterprise Director Irene Catane, Microsoft Philippines Director for Small, Midsize Solutions Partners Diana Tibbs and Microsoft Philippines Business Group Lead Tovia Va’aelua for the push-button inauguration.
In her closing remarks, Abelarde pledged PLDT SME Nation’s commitment to provide SMEs with the best broadband and digital solutions saying, “PLDT SME Nation reaffirms its support for Filipino SMEs as it continues to innovate and form partnerships with industry leaders to provide our country’s aspiring entrepreneurs with only the best broadband solutions for their businesses.” So SMEs, most especially the business-minded moms can really be supercharged in reaching more.