Coffee SMEs Sustainable Finance Training in Sumedang Regency

It is time for local roles in the coffee sector to start entering a wider market so that the presence of local products can be recognized by more people abroad.

This was conveyed by Raden Aswin Rahadi (Assistant Professor of the ITB School of Business and Management) in the webinar "Sustainable Finance Training for Coffee SMEs in Sumedang" last weekend. This webinar was held as a closing of research activities carried out by several ITB researchers. This series of research has been carried out, in collaboration between the School of Life Sciences and Technology and the School of Business and Management.

This webinar was attended by farmers from several regions. Starting from Sumedang to Klaten. The training materials discussed the application and how to maximize finance and digital marketing for coffee farmers in Sumedang.

On that occasion, Raden Aswin gave a material entitled "Marketing Strategies for Community-Based SMEs". Namely, providing a lot of views about marketing to the world of coffee.

"Because it's time for coffee farmers in Indonesia to compete in a wider arena," he said.

Raden Aswin also explained, several important marketing theories and steps in doing the latest marketing and used in several Start-ups. Namely, starting with determining who is the target market, market research, to making a marketing strategy.

"Make something that works best for your product, because what's best for everyone isn't necessarily the best for us," he says.

Meanwhile, Kurnia Fajar, one of the lecturers at SBM ITB, gave material on theory or basic things in 'Digital Bookkeeping Applications for MSMEs'.

According to him, in this digital age, things should move digitally. One of them is bookkeeping. This is because digital bookkeeping can solve some of the bookkeeping problems that occur among coffee farmers. Especially, coffee farmers who do not want to be bothered and do not understand and have limited time.

The speaker of the last session, Annisa Rizkia Syaputri, an expert in Accounting and Finance, a graduate of MSM SBM ITB, practiced how to do digital bookkeeping for coffee farmers. According to him, the advantage of having a digital application for bookkeeping is that they can easily find out whether or not they are profitable in doing business, especially selling coffee.

"And, it makes reporting easier and can provide a clear picture for creditors and investors if later the farmers will expand their business," he said.

Annisa assessed that the coffee farmers were quite enthusiastic about participating in the training. This can be seen from the 50 coffee farmers who participated in the training.

The training participants hope, said Annisa, that this kind of training can continue to be carried out to develop their business in the future and not only in Sumedang. However, it can reach other layers of the region, to achieve a better coffee industry in Indonesia.

According to him, this training does not stop here and will be followed up with the next training and carried out offline. Thus, farmers have experience and skills that can be applied directly to the sustainable development of the SME coffee business in Sumedang after the pandemic.