Extra tags: data analytics
Aksesmu, a retail distribution partner for small businesses that is managed by PT. Sumber Trijaya Lestari collaborates with Google Cloud to help local family-owned kiosks or stalls – also known as warungs – digitalise their operations and forge new revenue streams.
Warungs are the preferred shops of low- and middle-income Indonesians because they provide food and other daily necessities at inexpensive prices, thanks to rent savings from operating in self-owned premises. The biggest problem that warungs face is a lack of cash flow and inventory space. According to Indonesia's central bank, the current pandemic has had a negative impact on 87.5% of local micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs), with 93.2% reporting a decrease in sales.
Warungs in 28 provinces and 3,071 districts are supported by Aksesmu, a digital platform. It functions as a one-stop virtual hypermart that warung owners can access on their mobile phones, thanks to Google Cloud's safe and scalable infrastructure and advanced relational database technologies. Before placing an order, a warung owner may simply log in and select among hundreds of low-cost groceries and fast-moving consumer products. After that, Aksesmu arranges for free same-day delivery of these products to the warung from a stock station within a 10-kilometre radius.
“Aksesmu's mission is to create mutually beneficial partnerships and build an effective product distribution ecosystem for Indonesia’s micro and small businesses. When inventories are low, warung owners must sometimes close their stalls and travel to wholesalers or markets to buy fresh supplies. This process is time-consuming and results in lost sales. When pandemic movement restrictions made stock replenishments even harder, we felt the need to respond and help warung owners adopt new technologies to grow their livelihoods,” said Hans Harischandra, Director, PT. Sumber Trijaya Lestari.
“With Google Cloud’s best-in-class technologies and co-innovation, we have designed a digital platform that is easily accessible and addresses warung owners’ most urgent needs. We will continue collaborating with Google Cloud to enhance and scale our platform, so that we can accelerate digital inclusion for all 3.6 million warungs scattered across the Indonesian archipelago,” said Yosef Risdianto, Commercial General Manager, Aksesmu.
Enabling Reliable and Secure Access Anywhere, on Any Device
Many warung owners live in rural areas with intermittent internet connectivity. They also often use pay-as-you-go data plans or low-cost smartphones with less storage capacity. By leveraging Google’s application development platform and load balancing and caching capabilities, Aksesmu is able to give warung owners a smooth and reliable user experience on any device – whether they are accessing its digital platform as a web application or mobile application.
Aksesmu's development teams can swiftly create new features and incorporate third-party innovations using Google's open and trustworthy cloud, while ensuring dataflows are encrypted to decrease security threats. Aksesmu, for example, includes bookkeeping and pay later services from local fintech players to help warung owners manage their cash flow. Aksesmu collaborates with suppliers of prepaid cellphone top-up services and electricity tokens to enable warungs to sell e-vouchers to clients via its platform, providing additional revenue streams for warung owners.
“We continuously release new software updates to benefit warung owners – from keeping information up to date to adding new features and helpful content like educational videos on financial management and visual merchandising. Google Cloud’s Content Delivery Network helps us ensure that warung owners can stream our videos anytime, anywhere. By implementing Google Kubernetes Engine to automate application deployment and upgrades with no downtime, our technical teams can avoid time-consuming manual IT configurations and fully dedicate themselves to product innovation,” said Agus Priyanto, IT and
Tech Product General Manager, Aksesmu.
To enable secure collaboration and productivity amongst all employees, Aksesmu is also using Google Workspace with solutions spanning Gmail, Google Calendar, Drive, Docs, Slides, Sheets, Chat, and Meet. This means that frontline Member Relations Officers can use their devices of choice to communicate with colleagues while on the move and provide assistance when meeting with warung owners to make their onboarding experiences easier and non-intimidating.
Aksesmu is experimenting with data analytics, artificial intelligence (AI), and machine learning (ML) to better serve warung owners as part of the next phase of its relationship with Google Cloud. Understanding customer buying behaviour could lead to new items being recommended to warung owners to add to their stocks or show more prominently to boost sales. Aksesmu also wants to assist its users in using Google My Business to list their warung locations so that they can be found by nearby customers using Google Search and Google Maps.
"Indonesia's MSMEs are the lifeblood of our communities, and Aksesmu contributes significantly to our country’s goal of integrating 30 million MSMEs into the digital ecosystem by 2024," said Megawaty Khie, Country Director, Indonesia, Google Cloud. “By tapping the best of Google Cloud’s scalable, open source and secure infrastructure, as well as Google Workspace, Aksesmu has meticulously designed and delivered an accessible and feature-rich platform that’s benefitting 100,000 early adopters ahead of its launch. The company’s continuous innovation efforts will not only help to protect more warung owners’ livelihoods and improve their competitiveness, it will also create a robust retail distribution ecosystem to aid Indonesia’s economic recovery and long-term growth.”
