The top corporate and the SME sectors of SA have a number of similarities regarding IT end user requirements and perceptions, although there are a few exceptions. The most pronounced differences are created by access to finance and company size. Smaller companies tend to require business solutions that are modular and specific to a current business needs, whereas in the corporate sector, overall company efficiency improvements and solutions encompassing a number of functions are favoured.
In the corporate and SME sectors, a small increase in IT budgets is predicted for 2006 when compared with this year`s IT budget. It must be kept in mind however, that increases are likely to be spent on IT fulfilling a specific business need in a niche focus area.
BMI-TechKnowledge (BMI-T) believes that a number of factors may be contributing to this IT budget growth. In the corporate sector, compliance is a major issue, coupled with improvements in efficiency. A caveat in respect of the compliance spend is that most corporations see it as a "grudge spend" - that is compliance for compliance`s sake may be regarded as an expensive exercise with no tangible benefits. A challenge for IT vendors will be to highlight the business benefits that can be derived from a structured and pro-active compliance strategy.
A factor shared by SMEs and corporations is a desire to focus on their customers, both with regard to customer retention and acquisition. Security is another area where companies need to spend money to ensure that their organisations are protected.
IT end users from the corporate and SME sectors were asked in two separate BMI-T surveys to select their top three business solutions using a structured list. The results are depicted in the figure below.
The figure above shows that SMEs generally look for business solutions that address a specific business need, such as customer relationship management, business intelligence and content and document management, whereas larger corporations are able afford the more comprehensive IT packages that encompass a number of tasks, with their top three business solutions being enterprise resource planning, customer relationship management and enterprise application integration. This shows a focus on efficiency improvements and customer retention and care, which translate into a desire for cost savings and increased profitability in the corporate sector.
The SMEs` top business solutions focus is on developing better customer relations, improving decision-making and efficiency improvement. Enterprise resource planning and enterprise application integration are not widely used by SMEs as they look for modular solutions for specific business functions.
Open source is a very topical issue currently. When it comes to open source versus open standards, BMI-T has uncovered in a recent survey, that more than two thirds (68.2%) of the top corporations felt open standards are more important than open source. This highlights that easy integration between applications and platforms and avoiding vendor lock-in is more valuable than open source code.
Businesses in SA, whether large or small, continue to increase their IT spending plans in a gradual and cautious fashion, with a particular focus on efficiency improvement and customer retention and care. Top corporations show a particular emphasis on regulatory compliance and longer-term organisational improvements, whereas SMEs are more concerned with solutions that will assist in meeting immediate business requirements.
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