Over 30,000 small businesses across New Zealand have participated in the government-funded Digital Boost programme, which supports businesses by providing digital training to take advantage of digital tools and new opportunities through e-commerce.

“Over the last two years, many business owners had no option but to move to digital platforms in order to continue to generate revenue and meet the changing expectations of their customers. However, for large numbers of SME owners and operators, there were not easily accessible tools that allowed this transformation to take place,” Minister for Small Business Stuart Nash said.

“We decided early on that we needed to fill this educational gap in the market, so we set a target of backing 30,000 small businesses to undergo digital training. It’s great that we’ve hit this milestone ahead of schedule.”

New Zealand’s Budget 2021 committed $44 million for digital training and advice for over two years, setting up the Digital Boost programme as a public-private partnership to fulfil the government’s vision of New Zealand having the most digitally-enabled small business sector in the world.

The most recent statistics showed that there have been over 48,000 registered trainees in the Digital Boost programme since 2021, which includes over 30,000 small businesses.

“It’s promising to see early findings from the Digital Boost impact research that show increased digital capability among businesses that have been on the platform, with users applying more digital tools to their business resulting in increased resilience and revenue,” Minister Nash said.

“This is especially important considering that all innovations currently being implemented by the Government involve being digitally enabled – from paying taxes to e-invoicing, to the use of an NZBN to access Government support. The reality is that this is likely the last generation of business owners that could survive, let alone thrive, without being digitally enabled.”

Minister Nash stated that the use of digital tools has enabled Kiwi small businesses to stay connected, grow their channels to market, and drive efficiency and productivity, thereby supporting economic recovery.

“As we open back up to the world, it is important that we continue to harness the power of digital tools to make businesses more resilient and sustainable,” he said.

“With more features in development to support small business digitalisation, Digital Boost is on track to achieve the second half of our commitment – to have 30,000 small businesses with digital action plans – by June 2023.”

Source: Beehive.govt.nz. Content has been edited for style and length.

Eliza Sayon

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Eliza is a content producer and editor at Public Spectrum. She is an experienced writer on topics related to the government and to the public, as well as stories that uplift and improve the community.

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