Three Swisscontact projects are working on this gap from different points in the same system. In Kosovo, GROW project in Kosovo has examined why manufacturing enterprises hesitate to move beyond basic tools. In Georgia, the Rural SMEs Development Project (RSMEDP) is working with Bank of Georgia to help women entrepreneurs in rural regions turn online visibility into sales. In Albania, Skills for Jobs in Albania has seen e-commerce enter the vocational education system as a qualification for the first time. Read together, they show that digital transformation depends as much on people and institutions as on technology.
Kosovo: the gap between awareness and action
Kosovar enterprises are not disconnected from the digital world. The tools are here, but the mindset is still catching up: many businesses treat digitalisation as an additional cost rather than a change in how they operate. That is the difference between using technology and becoming a digital, agile enterprise.
A recent digital diagnostic by GROW with nine enterprises in the furniture and apparel sectors found a consistent pattern. Businesses are interested in digitalisation, but few are prepared for what adopting it requires.
Many companies start from the same place. Orders are tracked manually, customer information sits on personal devices, and production planning relies on individual experience rather than structured systems. Digital tools serve communication and marketing and are rarely part of core processes. This is not a lack of ambition. These arrangements work, everyone understands them, and replacing them means disrupting what currently keeps the business running.
Two obstacles stand out. The first is how investment is judged. Enterprises readily invest in machinery whose output can be counted at the end of the first shift, while the return on digital investment arrives more slowly, through better organisation, sounder decisions and stronger customer relationships. The second is ownership. In many enterprises digitalisation remains the owner’s task alone, with no one assigned to manage tools or make sure they are used once installed. When external support ends, adoption tends to slow. A customer management system or inventory platform creates value only when someone inside the company takes responsibility for making it part of daily work.
The diagnostic also points to a supply problem. Kosovo’s digital services market for manufacturers remains thin, and a furniture producer or apparel manufacturer is poorly served by generic software. What is missing are affordable, sector-specific solutions from providers who understand both the technology and the context. The next phase therefore needs to work on both sides of the market: advanced, integrated systems for more mature enterprises, basic skills and organisational readiness for smaller ones, and support for providers to build sector offers at prices these enterprises can meet. Co-financing can lower the risk on both sides, with enterprises committing less capital to an uncertain return and providers gaining the volume to justify building for these sectors.
Georgia: from a social media page to an online business
Georgia’s e-commerce market grew tenfold between 2018 and 2024, reaching GEL 3.5 billion, around 1.12 billion CHF. Online shoppers rose from 600,000 in 2018 to one million in 2025, and more than 10,000 Georgian companies now sell online.
Small businesses have yet to share fully in this growth. In 2024, 30% of Georgian SMEs used social media for business, but only 7% used enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, 7% had websites with advanced functions, and 3% sold online through websites, apps or platforms. Only half had access to fast broadband. These figures suggest that while many businesses have established a basic digital presence, relatively few have integrated digital technologies into their core business operations or fully leveraged e-commerce opportunities. A Facebook page used to talk to customers is very different from a digital channel used strategically for growth.
The gap widens outside the cities. In its first phase, RSMEDP found that rural SMEs often lacked awareness of digital business tools, while advisory services were concentrated in urban centres and geared to medium and large firms. For women entrepreneurs the barriers compound. Research under Swisscontact’s Women’s Entrepreneurship Development (WED) work found that relatively few women-led businesses sell online, most rely solely on Facebook or Instagram pages, and many face limits in ICT skills and confidence, alongside narrower access to networks, mentoring and business services.
In response, RSMEDP partnered with Bank of Georgia on a two-day e-commerce programme for women entrepreneurs in Adjara region, with a similar programme planned in Kakheti region of Georgia. It began with an assessment of each participant’s business, sales channels and challenges, so that the content matched real needs. Participants worked through online sales models, marketplaces such as Etsy, Extra.ge and MyMarket, social commerce on Facebook, Instagram and TikTok, and how to choose the right channel for their business. Much of the focus was on turning visibility into sales: understanding buyer behaviour, building trust, writing product descriptions and improving product photography with a smartphone.
The second day was devoted to the practical work where participants were grouped by digital maturity. Beginners set up Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp business accounts and published their first listings. More advanced participants had their pages audited, and experienced entrepreneurs worked on marketplace expansion and customer acquisition. The programme also covered taxation, electronic invoicing, business banking and the legal requirements of selling online, while Bank of Georgia introduced digital advertising, audience targeting and campaign budgeting. For women entrepreneurs in Georgia, particularly those operating in rural areas, digital skills can unlock access to larger markets, strengthen business resilience, and create new sources of income. However, achieving these outcomes requires more than access to technology alone. It requires practical knowledge, confidence, mentorship, and tailored support.
Through the partnership between Rural SMEs Development Project and Bank of Georgia, women entrepreneurs are receiving precisely this type of support. By combining practical training, hands-on coaching, and private sector engagement, the initiative is helping women-led businesses move beyond basic social media presence and take meaningful steps towards successful participation in the digital economy. The bank’s role matters beyond the training itself: a private sector actor is investing in the digital readiness of a client segment it has an interest in serving.
As Georgia continues its digital transformation journey, empowering women entrepreneurs with the skills and tools needed to compete online will be essential to building a more inclusive, innovative, and competitive SME sector.
Albania: an e-commerce workforce built in school
Kosovo and Georgia show what happens when businesses try to digitalise without people trained for it. Albania offers a view from the other end of the system: preparing that workforce before it reaches the labour market.
This school year, Albanian vocational education offers an E-commerce qualification for the first time, at Tirana Technical Economic School. The curriculum for the four-year dual programme was developed with the support of Albania’s e-commerce industry, ensuring that the qualification reflects the actual needs of the labour market. From the second year, part of the learning takes place inside a business, and students receive a monthly payment for that work.
The curriculum follows the full cycle of an online business. Students learn to open and run an online shop, manage stock, orders, deliveries and returns, communicate professionally with customers, including dissatisfied ones, protect personal data and work safely online, and read sales figures to understand what sells, what does not, and why. Graduates can move into trading companies, marketing agencies and logistics, or start a business of their own.
The significance lies in the system. When e-commerce becomes a recognised qualification, skills that Georgian women entrepreneurs are acquiring through short courses, and that Kosovar enterprises struggle to find in-house, start to be built into the education pipeline. Because the programme is dual, employers help shape those skills from the start, which could ease the ownership gap seen in Kosovo: companies gain staff who already know how to run digital processes.
Where the three experiences meet
Across the three countries, the lesson is consistent. Access to technology is no longer the main constraint. The constraint is the capacity to use it: the skills to sell online, the confidence to try, the internal ownership to sustain new systems, and a market of providers, banks and schools able to support that change.
Each project works on a different part of this. GROW is building evidence on enterprise readiness and the case for sector-specific digital services in Kosovo. RSMEDP is showing in Georgia how practical, needs-based training, delivered with a private sector partner, can move women-led rural businesses beyond a basic social media presence. In Albania, Skills for Jobs is helping bring e-commerce skills into vocational education, so that the next generation enters the labour market ready for this work.
Digitalisation is no longer a question of whether businesses will change. It is a question of whether the people, providers and institutions around them can help that change take hold.