Another Study on Small Business and Technology

I wrote a post about the Intuit/IFTF report on small business and technology last month.
This week the International Office of the International Council for Small Business (ICSB) announced the results of a Global Technology Study conducted in collaboration with DELL Inc. The study included a 12 country survey of small business owners and decision makers and a targeted survey of international small business researchers, practitioners, and consultants conducted by ICSB. The study confirms that IT is extremely important in the growth of small businesses world-wide.
“The survey results reinforce the fact that small business owners and the experts both acknowledge the importance of IT on a global level,” said Rob van der Horst, President of the ICSB. “Small businesses are using IT for multiple reasons, to better serve their customers and also to better compete in the marketplace.”
According to the survey, covering Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, China, Germany, India, Japan Mexico, New Zealand, the UK, and the US, sixty-six percent (66%) of small business owners indicate that IT is extremely important to their business. At the same time, fifty-seven percent (57%) of small business experts, researchers and educators surveyed by ICSB state that IT plays an extremely important role in the growth of small businesses. The ICSB portion of the study also shows that eighty-eight percent (88%) of small business experts think that most small business owners could financially benefit from a greater awareness of IT options.
The No. 1 reason small businesses use technology is to better serve customers, followed by growth of their business and, finally, to enable them to better compete in the marketplace. Additionally, small business owners around the world indicate that when it comes to IT:
– They prefer simple service solutions because they do not have full-time dedicated IT staff and are, therefore, installing their most sophisticated IT products on their own.
– They do not have time to explore new IT products/possibilities.
– Their top IT Pain Points include: managing costs of technology, product complexity making them too dependent on an outside company for support, and issues with trial-ware installed on new computers.