Online Support to Develop Digital Business Skills

With the announcement of a new digital project aimed at helping local businesses develop and upskill, here we take a look at why it is worth considering and what other digital tools can help boost your business.

The DESME Project

Councillor Rufus Gilbert, Cabinet Member for Economic Recovery and Skills, announced the new DESME Project, which offers bespoke training to help business benefit from digital tools, thereby improving management and growth. DESME stands for Digital Enablement for SMEs, designed as a type of self-assessment tool to help businesses better understand their strengths and weaknesses from a digital point of view. 

Thanks to the Digital Maturity Index, businesses can evaluate where there are needs for improvements. It does not just evaluate gaps and potential issues but can also refer businesses to the Course Finder. Small and medium-sized businesses across Devon are being encouraged to test out the digital tool with the hopes that they will benefit both in upskilling and continuous development.

Business managers first complete the self-assessment and can then download a report, which will help guide them through the process, including funded digital training courses. The new digital project is worth considering if you are a Devon-based business looking to provide your employees with the opportunity to upskill. 

Digital Support That Can Boost Your Business

Digital expertise is essential to business management, but even getting to grips with the basics can be difficult. There are now many exciting digital tools and support to help boost businesses of all sizes:

Virtual Card Payments

Offering your customers the ability to pay virtually and securely is becoming an integral part of all services provided by growing businesses. A digital card, such as the ones offered by Moss, holds everything that a physical card does, including card numbers, etc., but rather than being carried by customers is stored in a digital wallet, usually downloaded onto a phone or other smart device. 

Increasingly customers prefer making payments with virtual cards, as there is a reduced risk of fraud or theft and set budget limits on customised virtual cards. For a company, there is also the added benefit of using virtual cards for corporate expenses, making it more straightforward to track budgets, control spending, streamline workflows and make approvals. It is also easier for accounting to reconcile spending data and automate processes. 

Communication Tools

With the revolution in how we work and the introduction of hybrid working environments, digital communications tools are essential to the smooth running of any successful business. The idea of a physical office and meeting room is already becoming something of a distant memory.

There are various functionalities and methods of using communications tools, whether at a project level or for providing feedback. Tools such as Slack, Microsoft Teams, and Zoom can be utilised to provide a single source of communication for your teams and businesses as a whole. 

All digital tools are transforming our businesses and the way we work. However, there is a need to adapt to and adopt these technologies to make needed improvements. Upskilling is essential to this process, and tools like that provided through the DESME project offer the ideal solution.