Montenegro’s digital economy has expanded to around 5% of GDP, with annual growth of about 8% and more than 1,200 new jobs generated each year. At the same time, the country’s business structure presents a challenge for technology adoption, with micro enterprises accounting for about 96% of active companies.
Of Montenegro’s 63,823 active companies, 61,195 are micro enterprises. Their limited scale can make it difficult to employ specialised AI professionals, cybersecurity teams and data engineers internally. This creates demand for external technology services that allow small businesses to access specialised capabilities without establishing dedicated in-house teams Potential growth areas include AI-as-a-service, managed cybersecurity, cloud migration, workflow automation, outsourced IT and employee training.
The model is particularly relevant to accounting firms, retailers, professional-service companies and small manufacturers. Artificial intelligence can reduce the time required for routine administration, customer support, document processing and reporting, provided the technology can be securely integrated into existing business processes. Cybersecurity creates a similar requirement for external support. As companies increasingly conduct payments, maintain customer records and operate business processes online, smaller firms are exposed to ransomware, phishing and data-loss risks but generally lack the resources to maintain dedicated security departments.
Managed-service providers can address this gap by distributing specialised personnel and technology across multiple small and medium-sized business customers. The same approach can be applied to cloud infrastructure and business software. Rather than making substantial upfront investments, companies can use subscription-based services linked to actual usage.
Montenegro’s technology market could therefore increasingly involve external digital services purchased by large numbers of smaller companies rather than relying primarily on large corporate IT projects. This also creates a potential productivity divide. Larger companies capable of automating business processes could increase productivity more quickly, while businesses that continue to depend heavily on manual work could fall behind. Montenegro has already developed a growing digital sector, while the next challenge is providing affordable digital capabilities to the 96% of companies that are too small to establish technology teams of their own.
