Rumah UMKM : A Solution to Improve Global Competitiveness of SME through Sharing Knowledge

Abstraksi

Introduction Based on data provided by Ministry of Small, Medium Enterprises, it was known that in 2017 there is 61,6 million company registered as Small, Medium Enterprises while on the other hand, there is 5,3 thousand company registered as Big Enterprises. From the data itself, it was known that 99,9% company registered in Indonesia is categorized as Small, Medium Enterprises. In terms of workforce, there are 116 million people who work in a company registered as Small, Medium, Enterprises while on the other hand, there are 3,5 million people who work in a company registered as Big Enterprises. From this data, it was known that 97,02% people work in SME. It was a vast proportion that almost most people are working in SME. It shows that SME played an important role in Indonesia’s economy. Despite the big number of SME, the export growth of SME only reaches 16,89% while on the other hand the growth of Big Enterprises reaches 18,87%. This data shows that SME needs some improvement to be more competitive in the global market. Research Question 1. What is the best way to increase the global competitiveness of Indonesia’s Small, Medium, Enterprises? 2. How the government can take part to increase the global competitiveness of Indonesia’s Small, Medium, Enterprises? Methods According to Drucker (1992) the main success factor to increase the quality of individual and group work in a team in the process of deepening the knowledge. Knowledge can be gain by either learn by us or learn by sharing with others. Meflinda (2017) claims that there is a significant effect between sharing knowledge with the performance of SME. From this evidence, this paper tries to increase the performance of SME through knowledge sharing. Sharing knowledge is a process where people gathered together and share their knowledge with the other member of the organization. This paper proposes to create an idea where sharing knowledge is used to increase the global competitiveness of Indonesia’ small and medium enterprise. The main idea is to create SME’s community in the level of a district (kecamatan) called “Rumah UMKM”. The purpose of Rumah UMKM community itself is to support the performance of SME included in one community. The concept of the community will comprise of technical and non-technical support to increase the global competitiveness of their company. At the early stage, there will be provided with a place dedicated to the SME to gather and do the sharing knowledge process. This paper also suggests that there will be training to help the SME’s to increase their global competitiveness. In the early stage of business, SME will be required new knowledge in order to survive in the market industry. Especially when it comes from a rural area, this information will be more needed by the company. Many Small, Medium Enterprises are failed in their early stage of a company due to insufficient knowledge to manage a new company. There is even a case where an organisation doesn’t know how to start a company and registers the company to the government. This practice has been done by many of Indonesia’s state-owned enterprises with their “Rumah Kreatif BUMN” program launched by the Ministry of State Own Enterprise. The solution proposed by this paper will look similar to the solution offered by SOE. The difference is this support suggests that the government take a big part in this solution. Government through their representative (camat) together with the Ministry of Small, Medium Enterprises can take a big part in this solution. As a regulator, the government can initiate the process by identifying SME in their region and start to initiate the community. It will be tough if we only wait for the SME to create their own community, thus intervention by the government is needed to start the process. One of the solutions proposed by Telkom Indonesia called Kampung UKM Digital seems to give benefit to small, medium enterprise in the region. Basically, what Telkom do for the SME is by creating the SME community and manage their development through workshop programs provided by Telkom. This solution has been proved to give benefit for newly established Small, Medium Enterprises especially in a rural area to survive in the global market. This is a simple stage proposed by this paper: Stage 1: Government through their representative office in a district (kecamatan) will create team “Rumah UMKM” that might be consist of the government representative and youth association in their area (karang taruna) Stage 1: Team “Rumah UMKM” will start the process by gathering the number of SME in their area Stage 2: Establish the “Rumah UMKM” in each district. There will be a challenge in terms of the money needed to create/construct this so-called Rumah UMKM. This paper suggests that Government can cooperate with a big company operated in their area through their Corporate Social Responsibility allocation. Stage 3: Create the timeline for Rumah UMKM program including technical and non-technical aspects Stage 4: The team that responds to manage the Rumah UMKM in each district will start to gather SME in their area to initiate the sharing knowledge process. Stage 5: To ensure sustainability, the team can start to create a workshop that needed for each community, such as financial training, strategy training, etc. In conclusion, this paper tries to create a new environment to support the global competitiveness of Small, Medium, Enterprise in Indonesia through the community. This community will function as a place for SME to gather together and share knowledge with each other. This has been done before by Telkom Indonesia and can be done further with the full help of government and citizen of each area.