ASEAN COMMUNITY OF ENTREPRENEURS
OPINION
FINANCIAL INFORMATION GAP
The importance of financial information
must be enculturalised from among
small business owners in the running
of the daily operations. Agents of
change to humanise and enculture
financial information must start from
among the young prospective record
keeping entrepreneurs. With the
government’s policy to drive Malaysia
as a developed nation status by
2020, exposing students early and
academics to small business practices
is therefore necessary.
A concerted multi-helix effort
from various agencies involving higher
learning institutions or chambers
of commerce with small business
development agencies must be taken.
Higher learning institutions through
their 22 established entrepreneurship
and small business centres from
among universities, polytechnics and
community colleges must become
the seed bed for talents that can
help small business understand
and analyse the importance of their
financial information.
At
the
Centre
For
Entrepreneurship and Small and
Medium-sized
Entrepreneurs
Development (CESMED) of the
National University of Malaysia,
academic programmes and curriculum
in accounting and finance are taught
creatively by embedding experiential
teaching and learning. Mundane
traditional teaching pedagogies is
supplemented or enhanced with
32
hands-on apprenticeship programmes
for students and supervision of
academics in small businesses.
Through this method, both students
and academicians learn how to
contextualise their accounting and
financial knowledge in the operations
of the business.
Small business apprenticeship
for students and academicians
must be supported continuously by
development agencies. Involvement
of the SME Corporation with
local
universities
through
the
SME@University
Apprenticeship
Programmes and the Ministry of
Higher Education recent programme
through the Siswapreneur@PPRN
is an example of a multi-helix effort
to bring business practice into the
classroom and putting in financial
ASEAN COMMUNITY OF ENTREPRENEURS | ISSUE 2 : 2016
and accounting knowledge into
the business. Members from small
business associations and micro
companies under the Public Private
Research Network, for example, must
be exposed to the idea of having
student as interns in their businesses.
Students being technology savvy
present an extra helping hand in the
record keeping purposes as interns
and are less intimidating compared
to potential funders and accounting
services companies who are often
perceived as trying to market their
financial products and record keeping
solutions. Moreover, students can
be further taught to use the FinTech
system who then transfer the
knowledge to the small businesses.
Also, these students will enter
the job market or run their own small
business being better informed to the
rudiments of business management.
As such, they will better understand
how record keeping forms an integral
part for companies to seek financing
for growth, controlling companies’
performances through managing
variances in financial achievements
and building its own companies’
assets.
In summary, issues of asymmetry
information from among small
businesses and funding institutions
can only be reduced through
educating small business owners of
its importance. Disruptive lending
technologies offered by FinTech
is a step towards simplifying loan
accessibility and record keeping
requirement. Having students to
assist small business in record keeping
through
using
the
FinTech
technology
is a smart move to
take advantage of
the technology savvy
students. All these
are made possible
through
multi-helix
collaborations
by
investing
in
time,
expertise and sharing
working spaces.
Associate Professor Dr Shamshubaridah Ramlee is currently the Director at the Centre
of Entrepreneurship and SME Development of the National University of Malaysia. She
can be reached at [email protected].