Adapting Management Strategies in SMEs to the Era of Digital Transformation

Introduction: Given the benefits of digitalisation, including optimisation of internal processes, increased productivity, better stakeholder engagement, and adaptation to rapidly changing market conditions, the analysis of digital transformation and its role in shaping enterprise management strategies is particularly relevant. Objective: The article aims to analyse the impact of digital transformation on the formation and implementation of management strategies for SMEs'. Methods: The article uses general scientific methods of cognition, in particular, methods of synthesis, systematisation and generalisation, to determine the status and current trends in the development of SMEs. Quantitative analysis includes statistical data analysis to collect, process and group the initial data; forecasting to identify trends in SME performance; and correlation analysis to determine the impact of digitalisation on SMEs' economic activities. Results: Strong positive correlations between EGDI (r = 0.965, p = 0.002), OSI (r = 0.955, p = 0.03), TII (r = 0.934, p = 0.006) and medium-sized enterprise performance show digital transformation significantly boosts management efficiency and stability. Conversely, digitalisation weakly or negatively affects small individual entrepreneurs, highlighting the need for tailored strategies amid ongoing global challenges and war escalation. Conclusion: The results of the quantitative study confirm that digital transformation has a positive impact on the activities of small and medium-sized enterprises while requiring the adaptation of digitalisation strategies for individual entrepreneurs, as the analysis did not reveal a significant correlation between the performance of this group and the digital development indices.