SMEs talk about benefits of ICT usage

Adoption of information and communications technologies (ICT) can give small businesses the edge they need to stay in the black during the economic downtown. This was the message from a roundtable of experts who were in Toronto earlier this month to talk about the benefits of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) leveraging ICT. Online marketing company Right Sleeve Marketing Inc. was one such company that was able to streamline sales operations and double profitability over the past five years after implementing a customer relationship management (CRM) system. CEO Mark Graham said the company had to differentiate in the market so it could get a competitive edge on larger rivals and to do that Right Sleeve went the technology route. "We reached a point where if you have 75 to 100 suppliers, it starts to become too difficult to manage the paper," said Graham. "We created an online order system, and CRM that we built in house, and it allowed us to scale overnight exponentially. We increased the number of suppliers and customers without increasing our overhead." But Right Sleeve didn't stop there, it opted for some Web 2.0 technologies such as social media sites YouTube, Facebook and Flickr to reach out to customers. "We want to be open about our products and the culture of our company," said Graham, claiming that the company's blog is one of the most popular pages searched, according to Google analytics. The small and medium business market is a significant driver of the Canadian economy with some estimating it represents more than 80% of all businesses in the country. In Ontario, SMEs, defined as enterprises with fewer than 500 employees, represent 99% of all businesses. According to the Ontario government, SMEs generate more than $250 billion annually in economic activity. Harinder Takhar, Ontario minister of Small Business and Consumer Services, talked about how the provincial government helps small businesses adapt to new realities and importance of technology usage in the marketplace. He noted the Ontario government funds enterprise centres that are designed to assist small businesses in upgrading their infrastructure. They are found in major centres across the province. Small businesses typically have small sales forces, and need to maximize the Internet, and their web presence, to reach their customers on a broader scale, he said. Leveraging a tool such as videoconferencing is also a good way to reach global markets, Takhar added. There are costs to technology implementation and that's part of the reason why Canada lags behind other developed countries particularly the United States in SMBs' adoption of ICT. But SMBs have to look past the upfront cost and at the long-term value from ICT adoption. Takhar said companies routinely look at the return on investment of implementing a new technology to their business. But they have to consider what the long-term cost will be if they don't adopt ICT for business operations. Dave Anderson, partner and president of Nequity.net, said businesses should look beyond the sticker price of owning technology and should evaluate the technology thoroughly. While an operating system like Linux is open source and can be accessed for free, it may come with a cost in time to an organization, he highlighted as one possible example. "The cost to you in labour and time in your organization will be far greater than purchasing off the shelf," Anderson said. "Depending from where you are pooling your labour force, going with what they are used to will be cheaper. There is certainly support and expertise involved with people like Microsoft and HP that you won't get with some of the other products. If you don't have people with the expertise, the resources, and time to extract the information you need to problem solve, you will have bad experiences." Michael McAvoy, director of commercial marketing at Hewlett-Packard Canada said technology should be an enabler for a small enterprise, allowing the business to better service its clients and find the right employees for the company. Data protection and security are two types of technologies that are critical, he said, noting the possibility that customer data could fall into the wrong hands can keep a business owner up at night.

SMEs talk about benefits of ICT usage

News | 02/13/2009 12:13 pm EST

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