Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) don’t have the money to obtain the most innovative technologies, a new report from the digital workspace firm Gridfox suggests.
As a result, they can’t bring in and retain the most talented employees, hampering growth and their ability to compete with larger organizations.
According to the report, this is true for 84 percent of small businesses, who said they couldn’t keep up with competitors’ technology innovation budgets. Almost half said this restricted growth and impacted their ability to recruit.
Polling 500 SME professionals across the UK for the report, Gridfox found that a third of small businesses still rely on spreadsheets for tasks such as invoice tracking and data management. A third said this makes them vulnerable to cybersecurity risks, and a fifth are worried about their data storage practices.
To better support busy teams and help improve internal processes, SMEs need software that’s accessible 24/7, the report states.
“Our research shows that SMEs, many of whom have already had to rapidly adapt to change due to the recent impact of Covid-19 and Brexit, are feeling trapped between managing data in programs like spreadsheets or moving to products that aren’t fit for purpose,” said Philip White, Gridfox founder.
“Historically, they just couldn’t compete with the big digital transformation budgets larger organizations have to tailor and adapt systems.”
