Does your business have ‘digital fluency’? A new MYOB and Digital Skills Organisation partnership aims to build SME tech skills

Business accounting platform MYOB has revealed a new partnership with the government-backed Digital Skills Organisation (DSO) that’s designed to close the ‘digital divide’ keeping small and medium enterprises from future-proofing their businesses and guarding themselves from cyber security threats.

The partnership, unveiled Tuesday, will see MYOB and the DSO work on a new standard for ‘digital fluency’ — a level at which a small business is understood to incorporate forward-thinking technologies and processes, allowing them to keep pace with further changes to the economy.

Once that standard is set, MYOB and DSO hope to host an SME roundtable, discussing what training and industry strategies are needed for businesses to reach that ‘digital fluency’.

Helen Lea, chief employment experience officer at MYOB, said many Australian businesses have a long way to go before reaching digital proficiency.

“Despite the rapid acceleration of digital adoption over the past 12 months, we estimate half a million Australian SMEs still have no or low levels of digitisation,” she said in a statement.

“It’s a missed opportunity for these businesses to enhance their work processes for future growth and for the nation to benefit from a thriving SME community.”

The partnership arrives in the midst of National Skills Week, and just over a week before the landmark Jobs and Skills Summit, where digitisation and tech skills are set to take centre stage.

The federal government’s latest Skills Priority List, revealed this week, shows ICT business and systems analysts, and software and applications programmers, will be among the most in-demand professionals over the next five years.

The MYOB and DSO team-up also coincides with the release of a new interim report from the Productivity Commission, focused on the digital skills needed to drive productivity.

The report suggests large businesses often face high up-front costs when upgrading their digital processes, but smaller businesses suffer through a lack of skilled staff members.

“Other studies have also found that small and medium enterprises have less mature cyber security practices, attributable to issues such as ad-hoc cyber budgets, poor preparation for incident response and a lack of understanding of technical security terms,” the report said.

Beyond the need for small businesses to brush up on their cyber security protocols, the Productivity Commission report also calls for increased data access and continued government guidance on its use.

While strong data sets can serve as the raw material for innovative solutions, “increased data access must be balanced alongside incentives for the ongoing collection and maintenance of quality data, as well as privacy and data security concerns,” the report found.