Business Advisors and SMEs in the Digital Era: Essential Skills

Abstract

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) play a key role in the European economy, but they often face challenges in keeping up with digitalisation. Business advisors serve as an essential part of the support infrastructure for SMEs. This article explores the alignment between SMEs' digital needs and the digital know-how and future priorities of business advisors. The central research question is: How well do the current competencies and future development priorities of business advisors correspond with the digital development needs expressed by SMEs? The study follows a descriptive and comparative research approach, based on two online survey datasets: one targeting 118 SMEs and the other 100 business advisors from different public advisory organisations in Finland. The results indicate that SMEs and business advisors agree on key areas of digital competence. Although both groups share a mutual understanding of digital priorities, there are differences in the use of tools, which can undermine the effectiveness of business advice. To effectively support SMEs, business advisors need to have up-to-date digital skills and the organisational conditions to apply them in practice. Bridging these gaps requires targeted training, better application of digital tools in daily work and continuous competence development for both business advisors and SMEs.