Aksesmu Collaborates with Google Cloud to Help Warung Owners Digitalize Their Businesses and Make a Comeback Amidst the Pandemic – Google Cloud

Aksesmu Collaborates with Google Cloud to Help Warung Owners Digitalize Their Businesses and Make a Comeback Amidst the Pandemic

Google Cloud accelerates the delivery of a feature-rich technology platform to drive digital inclusion and economic recovery, while Google Workspace is used to empower frontline workers

Jakarta, Indonesia, Feb. 23, 2022 Aksesmu, a retail distribution partner for small businesses that is managed by PT. Sumber Trijaya Lestari, is collaborating with Google Cloud to help local family-owned kiosks or stalls also known as warungs digitalize their operations and forge new revenue streams.

Warungs are the retailers of choice for low- and middle-income households across Indonesia because they sell food and daily necessities at affordable prices, made possible by rent savings from operating within self-owned premises. The main challenge faced by warungs, however, is limited cash flow and inventory space. These are exacerbated by the ongoing pandemic, which has adversely affected 87.5 percent of local micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs), of which 93.2 percent have experienced a decline in sales, according to Indonesias central bank.

Aksesmu is a digital platform that supports warungs in 28 provinces and 3,071 districts. Built entirely on Google Clouds secure and scalable infrastructure and advanced relational database technology, it acts as a one-stop virtual hypermart that warung owners can access on their mobile phones. A warung owner can simply log in and choose from hundreds of competitively-priced groceries and fast-moving consumer goods before placing an order. Aksesmu then facilitates the same-day delivery of these supplies to the warung from a stock point located within a 10-kilometer radius, at no extra cost.

Aksesmu's mission is to create mutually beneficial partnerships and build an effective product distribution ecosystem for Indonesias 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 Clouds 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 DeviceMany 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 Googles 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.

With Googles open and trusted cloud, Aksesmus developer teams can quickly create new features and integrate third-party innovations while ensuring dataflows are encrypted to reduce security risks. To strengthen warung owners cash flow management, for instance, Aksesmu incorporates bookkeeping and pay later services from local fintech players. To give warung owners new revenue streams, Aksesmu interoperates with providers of prepaid mobile top-up services and electricity tokens to allow warungs to sell e-vouchers to customers via its platform.

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 Clouds 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.

As part of the next phase of its collaboration with Google Cloud, Aksesmu is exploring the use of data analytics, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to better serve warung owners. Possible use cases include understanding the buying behavior of consumers to recommend new items that warung owners can add to their inventories or display more prominently to increase sales. Aksesmu also aims to help its users list their warung locations using Google My Business, so they can be discovered by nearby consumers using Google Search and Google Maps.

"Indonesia's MSMEs are the lifeblood of our communities, and Aksesmu contributes significantly to our countrys 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 Clouds scalable, open source and secure infrastructure, as well as Google Workspace, Aksesmu has meticulously designed and delivered an accessible and feature-rich platform thats benefitting 100,000 early adopters ahead of its launch. The companys 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 Indonesias economic recovery and long-term growth.

About Google CloudGoogle Cloud accelerates organizations ability to digitally transform their business. We deliver enterprise-grade solutions that leverage Googles cutting-edge technology all on the cleanest cloud in the industry. Customers in more than 200 countries and territories turn to Google Cloud as their trusted partner to enable growth and solve their most critical business problems.

About AksesmuThe name Aksesmu reflects our role in giving small and micro entrepreneurs open and easy access to technology, as well as convenient delivery services and business assistance, to facilitate their business development. Backed by PT. Sumber Trijaya Lestari and its experience in retail distribution, Aksesmu is the trusted partner for helpful services to small and micro entrepreneurs. We are here, ready to serve, assist and grow together. We provide easy access to meet the business needs of all our partners

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Aksesmu Collaborates with Google Cloud to Help Warung Owners Digitalize Their Businesses and Make a Comeback Amidst the Pandemic - Google Cloud