[VIDEO] Ticker News
Telstra is offering small businesses a free digital checkup and engage a business expert to help advance your digital journey with the best tools to suit your business.
Bill Lang spoke with Ticker News about the partnership between Telstra and Small Business Australia to help them go digital and improve their online strategy.
Learn more about the free service – www.telstra.com.au/small-business/business-services/go-digital-consult
Holly
There’s a new initiative for Australian small businesses called Go Digital. Now, can you talk to us a little bit about what this actually is? We know that telecom giant Telstra is investing $8.5 million into this to help small businesses. Can you talk to us about what it actually is?
Bill Lang
Yeah, look, absolutely. And we’re very, very excited and proud of our relationship that we have with a foundation partner in our Buy Local movement with Telstra, along with organisations like the NAB in Australia Post and Snap and Ticker our streaming partner. But the fantastic thing that Telstra is stepping up on the big issues that come out of a pandemic for many, many small businesses is how far behind they have been with respect to making their business digitally secure, and using digital tools that many younger business owners are already using. But they found that there’s been a big gap in the way they go about their businesses and the pandemic has really changed the rules.
So what Telstra has stepped up to the plate and done it, and it’s the biggest telco sort of Australian technology and in a company that we’ve got, and I deal with more than 1.2 million, about 2 million small businesses that said look, first 50,000 that my contact with them can go through what’s called a Go Digital Consult, which means that they can get to talk at no cost with a Telstra consultant, digital business consultant, who will help the business owner then understand what are some of the key gaps are and some of the weaknesses important and point them in the right direction as to what some of the solution should be. And the other great thing with this, Holly, is that Telstra and Small Business Australia has bought together a number of other partners, people like Microsoft, people like Google people like Samsung, and they are also contributing to the heavily subsidised services to make it more affordable for these businesses to be able to access, so just got launched by Andy Penn the CEO of Telstra today and I encourage all of your viewers to look out for it and do a do a Google search on Telstra, Go Digital, and go and take advantage of very high quality advice to help you understand exactly what the gaps are and how to go about getting them closed to make your business one of those businesses that is more digital, more secure, and will be more successful.
Holly
Exactly. I mean, it’s such a great initiative. And I mean for Telstra to invest that amount of money it’s fantastic. Exactly how will it be launched into the market?
Bill Lang
So today, Andy Penn talked about it with respect to mainstream media. They’re actually running a competition, which is incredibly exciting. So as the businesses go through the service, they’re also going to get the opportunity to be promoted nationally as part of Telstra, significant support for the NRL and other major sporting codes around the country. So there’s also going to be promotional support for the winners of those competitions, in addition to the 50,000 that can actually access free consulting assistance with a Telstra digital business expert.
