IT-friendly SMEs suffered less in the recession than firms that dismissed IT strategy by a margin of two to one, the country's biggest study of the impact of the recession on small and medium enterprises (SMEs) has found.
The study of 7,200 UK SME decision makers by Vanson Bourne for BT, found that companies with a positive attitude to using technology had a better than average experience of the recession that technology laggards by 69% to 34%.
Mick Hegarty, head of BT Business, which published the results this morning as part of its sponsorship of Small Business Week, said a company was twice as like to increase turnover by more than 10% if it had a positive attitude to IT investment than those that didn't.
Technology helped firms save money (30%), network and find advice (32%), and find new customers (28%).
Smaller firms were starting to use social networking extensively, while larger, older firms felt faster broadband speeds had helped their businesses.
Larger SMEs were also keen to converge their communications media such as voicemail, e-mail, and text into a single system.
http://www.computerweekly.com/Articles/2009/10/19/238197/it-friendly-smes-do-better-in-recession.htm