The Role of Community Managers in Digitizing Small Businesses

Asnaf is a person that is eligible to receive zakat, a form of almsgiving collected from Muslims. Asnaf i-Care is a business and income management website designed to help qualified Asnafs who are computer-illiterate do online business. It uses the idea of a community manager to help asnaf merchants conduct online business by marketing their products online. This idea was introduced to assist in digitizing merchants' conventional business. The Community Manager takes care of the overall e-commerce website management and manages marketing through social media and orders. The overall design of Asnaf I-Care includes Phase 1, developing an e-commerce system for Asnaf products; Phase 2, monitoring the income of Asnaf entrepreneurs; and Phase 3, distributing Asnaf goods. In addition, this paper covers phase 1, the purchasing system. Feedback was compiled from 37 asnaf merchants operating small and micro enterprises and 43 university students. The questionnaire was divided into four parts: merchants' readiness to transition to e-commerce business with community managers, acceptance of the concept of Asnaf i-Care and community managers, pricing in Asnaf i-Care application, and merchants' suggestions and comments to improve Asnaf i-Care application. Overall, almost all Asnaf merchants agree with community managers' concept of helping them implement their online businesses. However, the percentage of agreement is slightly lower among students than among merchants. In conclusion, Asnaf dealers can adopt the concept of community business well with the help of community managers, especially those whose business is negatively affected by the situation COVID -19.