Photo credit; Pavel Medzyun on Flickr
Many small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are missing the opportunity to use online tools to run their core business better by: cutting costs, reaching customers and suppliers, innovating and getting more control over their business, according to a new Grattan Institute discussion paper.
Businesses with less than 200 employees employ two-thirds of private sector workers and contribute more than half of Australia’s private sector GDP and if advanced online technology becomes the norm among SMEs, the productivity gains would spread through the whole economy.
There are four big opportunities for SMEs to use online tools more effectively: mobile, social, data analytics, and the cloud. The paper says:
- only 18% of Australian SMEs with an internet connection have developed mobile-optimised websites.
- only a quarter of Australian SMEs with an internet connection say they use social networking for marketing purposes.
- many SMEs haven’t realised the full potential of data analytics to understand their customer segments.
- only 8% of Australian SME managers say they use the cloud. But 47% of SMEs with an internet connection use basic cloud computing services such as webmail or cloud data storage.
All four opportunities can help small firms win where before they would have lost to larger firms that could absorb the fixed costs of corporate IT.
