For as long as most of us can remember, small and medium-sized enterprises have been the economy's backbone. Few modern cities in the world have as many street vendors grinding out a living on a daily basis as we have in Bangkok.

Pongsak Chewcharat, the Small and Medium Enterprise Development Bank's new president, said that one of his bank's main missions was to ensure that SMEs were given the proper support to continue being successful drivers of a sustainable Thai economy.

"We know that financing alone is no longer a guarantee for sustainable success," he said.

More than 99 per cent of the country's estimated 1.87 million businesses are SMEs employing fewer than 200 workers each.

In Thailand SMEs usually have 50 or fewer staff and fixed assets of less than Bt50 million, while medium-sized enterprises, depending on the type of business, can range from 16 to 200 employees and have assets ranging from Bt30 million to Bt200 million.

"Their overall success and the SME Bank's ability to build a successful Thai entrepreneurial society are critical elements of Thailand's successful overall economic development," Pongsak said.

Consequently the bank is proactively developing new advisory and development programmes and services to help promote the sustainable development of SMEs.

"To ensure we achieve our overall mission, everyone associated with the SME Bank is also undertaking a complete paradigm shift on how he or she approaches our business," he said.

The shift includes much more than providing valuable and necessary ancillary business services to the bank's SME customers. "We are proactively developing a whole new mind-set on how we approach our business."

Pongsak, who took over as president late last year, said that the SME Bank had once viewed its primary role as a government institution that provided much-needed financing for the country's more than 1.8 million SMEs.

"Our key mission and focus today is much more expansive, because it includes doing everything in our power to nurture and build a sustainable Thai entrepreneurial society."

To accomplish that, the SME Bank must offer a comprehensive set of development services ranging from resources that help nurture and encourage an individual industry's development and growth to funding for individual companies and capabilities to continuously offer cutting-edge business-advisory services, he said. "We can no longer just be credit and investment advisers."

As a result, the new SME Bank employee no longer merely focuses on selling the bank's latest products or completing his daily job requirements.

"They must now be customer-focused and do their utmost to provide optimal solutions so that the customer's business can be successful," he said.

To ensure that it can efficiently reach and service its customers, the bank's employees are now trained and assigned to become specialists for targeted industries.

"We can no longer be a bunch of generalists who address all SME needs," he said.

Operationally, the SME Bank's paradigm shift requires everyone associated with the bank to proactively network and search out customers, identify a customer's anticipated needs and ultimately address and resolve them successfully.

"It's no longer good enough for us to wait for the customer to come to us," he said.

If the SME Bank's paradigm shift is successful, SMEs will grow and, perhaps more importantly, continue to be the main driver of a sustainable-growth economy.

Statistics indicate that SMEs generate more than 80 per cent of the country's non-farm employment, 42 per cent of gross domestic product and 38 per cent of manufactured exports.

"We must always remember that successful SMEs are a critical element of our country's well-being," Pongsak said.

The first part was published on April 30.