Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) have faith in IT`s ability to reduce costs and bring about profitability, says Arthur Goldstuck, MD of research firm World Wide Worx, who launched his SME survey findings in Sandton today.
The event highlighted the findings of five months of research into IT use and perceptions of a total of 5 742 SMEs, and coincided with the end of Computer Faire at the Sandton Convention Centre.
Cost reduction was the most significant benefit SMEs derived and expected to keep getting from IT, said Goldstuck. "About 41% are extremely positive about future expectations in this regard. A large majority also expects to win and retain customers in future, because of IT (64% are positive or extremely positive), and 40% are extremely positive about IT`s ability to make them more profitable."
Who was polled
Goldstuck said the breakdown in size of companies surveyed reveal that most (1 400 companies) had between 11 and 20 employees, a slightly smaller proportion have 21 to 30 employees, and the average size company surveyed employed 20 to 40 people.
"We aimed our questions at financial decision-makers, but since you cannot generalise the structure of different companies, we didn`t only target financial executives. Also the owners and other decision-makers were thus targeted, with financial decision-makers totalling some 3 200 respondents."
More findings
In the recent past, 47% of companies spent more than 1% of turnover on IT, Goldstuck said. A total of 21% said they spent 6% to 10%. These numbers will increase slightly in future, according to their expectations, so that 49% of SMEs will spend more than 1% of turnover on IT this year.
"This means SMEs are realising the importance of IT and increasing their spend accordingly," Goldstuck concluded.
Further findings show that in terms of connectivity, the vast majority of SMEs are connected via modem (3 250) and slightly less (1 250) have ISDN. "This tallies with Telkom`s claims of having installed 500 000 ISDN lines," he said. "GPRS and ADSL are emerging technologies here."
Goldstuck added that 65% of SMEs buy from service providers, whereas 27% buy from retail. "This must mean they don`t have a connection," he quipped.
Most SMEs use Standard Bank online banking, with Absa only third (21%), and Nedbank online and First National Bank in second and fourth places.
"Next, we asked them what were the most important determining factors in buying IT," he said. "Suffice it to say that quality, avoidance of downtime and the relationship they have are the most important. Very revealingly, price was the least important."
Other findings show most SMEs have a good opinion of their service providers (SPs), whether IT support SPs, banking and online banking SPs or Internet SPs.
Furthermore, SMEs were polled about their business inhibitors, in terms of resources. "The findings are that half of SMEs rely on their own resources and don`t really look for funding," said Goldstuck.
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