SME Landscape Analysis
A project done by Climate Action Catalyst
The brief
SG Tech is Singapore’s largest and most prominent technology-centred industry association, comprising members from large MNCs to small SMEs within the tech ecosystem. As emissions move increasingly to the forefront of corporate sustainability mandates, SGTech is looking to incorporate programs targeted at supporting members with emission reduction.
With a significant portion of SGTech members being SMEs, SGTech is looking to find out 1) what is the sustainability as-is for their SME members; 2) what are current barriers SMEs face in their sustainable transformation efforts; 3) what can SG Tech do as an association to help them overcome such barriers.
The solution
To help SGTech attain both breadth and depth in understanding the SME sustainability landscape, our project was split into two parts. Firstly, we interviewed a select group of SME members from different parts of the tech ecosystem, to dive deeper into their attitudes towards sustainabilities and potential problems they faced in sustainability transformation.
Once we completed this round of qualitative data collection, we used the insights derived to create a structured questionnaire that was disseminated through the SGTech network. The structured questionnaire consisted of current sustainability performance, sustainability challenges faced, attitudes towards latest sustainability developments and sustainability aspirations for their business.
After the survey, we crunched the data and presented our findings at a SGTech brown bag event, attended by SGTech leaders and members, which consisted of leading tech companies locally, alongside other sustainability professionals.
Previously, SMEs’s attitudes and reactions towards sustainability was considered to be largely unverified and unclear by industry associations, big players and policy makers. The study, one of the first of its kind in Singapore for the tech industry, shed light on the unique challenges and attitudes faced by SMEs and will be used to inform sustainability support packages and even, government budget recommendations to better support SMEs in transitioning into the net zero economy of tomorrow.