In a study released by American Express last month, there was some interesting survey results related to technology that seemed to get overlooked (healthcare and taxes were the headline issues from this survey).
A majority of small business owners (51%) believe that “technology has transformed the way business is conducted” over the last 20 years, according to the OPEN from American Express Semi-annual Small Business
Monitor.
About 40% of small business owners plan on some form of technology investment over the next six months. What is interesting is that much of this investment is for what can be considered the standard workhorse technology for business (desktop computers, laptops, printers, phone systems, and software. This level of investment seems consistent with a growing optimism among small business owners.
Interestingly, a fairly small percentage (12%) were planning on buying the newer generations gadgets, such as PDAs and “smart phones.” This is not surprising to me, as small business owners tend to lag in adopting new technology. Most seem to have a “show-me” mentality. Technology has to have a clear return on investment, as those are dollars that could be spent on creating more sales or simply put in the owners pockets as profits. (Thus, by stubborn resistance to the fax machine in the 1980s).
Only 13% of owners/managers read blogs relating to their business and less than one in ten maintain blogs for their business (7%). Again, unless they find clear value-added, they are slow to adopt.
Dr Jeff Cornwall
Co-founder of The Entrepreneurial Mind, serial entrepreneur and professor of entrepreneurship.
Prof Jeff,
Its even worse elsewhere.
In our country, the pHilippines, we have about 1,000 companies that are considered large. We have about 5,000 to 10,000 companies that are considered medium. We have about 1,000,000 businesses that are considered small or micro.
as a technology provider, we can say that almost all computer companies consider only the top 10,000 companies as meaningful customers who adopt some kind of technology to manage the business.
In this age of global competition, what scares me, ( and probably this goes for many SMEs in developing countries), is that one million businesses ( or 99.5% of all businesses) are not using technology to any degree that gives them business competitiveness.
That is what I see as also a digital divide — so many number of small businesses who still have no inkling on how to use technology in their operations.
I think that technology in our day and age is essential in business development and growth. If those smaller businesses can find that cash to spend extra for better technology, they should do it. Yes, it is good to save cash the majority of the time, but technology is updating so quickly that a business does not want there day to day operations have to change so drasticaly every so often because of a new technologies being born. I guess my point is that if you wait too long to upgrade, you might lose future sales or customers because customers demand the best and most competitive edge when purchasing a product or service.