Sharing and transmitting information between offices in widely-dispersed locations can tax the biggest of organisations – let alone smaller businesses that operate on a much tighter shoestring.
Disability charity Scope, which has its headquarters in North London, has a total of 150 offices in England and Wales and 250 retail outlets.
Head of IT, Thomas Metzler, says the charity switched to broadband in 2004 – and during the past two years, has implemented new technology as it has become viable and affordable.
‘Information technology increasingly binds the organisation together; IT allows more efficient sharing of information to a geographically dispersed organisation,’ he says.
‘And IT also plays a vital role for disabled people, helping them achieve equality by providing means of contact and information using tools and products that are tailored to their specific needs.’
Scope’s experience illustrates that small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) can benefit enormously from new technology – even without the massive resources available to global giants.
Ed Thompson, an analyst with Gartner, says technology can actually deliver proportionally greater returns to SMEs, because they are not weighed down by the complex legacy or integration requirements of a much larger organisation.
‘It can also allow you to compete more effectively with larger businesses, by creating more of a level playing field in terms of things such as customer service, efficiency and supplier management,’ he says.
However, achieving those benefits can be enormously challenging for SMEs. Many smaller firms might only have one or two full-time IT staff, and generally do not have formal processes for evaluating or implementing leading-edge technologies. It can also be harder for SMEs to find accurate, unbiased information about new products and services.
Ranulf Scarbrough, programme manager at Act Now, which offers advice and support to SMEs in Cornwall, says small firms associate technology with risk, and often need more handholding. ‘That is why smaller businesses have generally lagged behind in adopting the more cutting-edge stuff,’ he says.
Also, SMEs can easily fall into the trap of being caught up in day-to-day maintenance of IT systems, instead of looking strategically at how technology might help the business, says Paul Russell, head of consulting services with service management specialist Servo.
‘A lot of the time, something breaks, the IT guy fixes it, it breaks again, the IT guy fixes it – nothing really changes or improves,’ he says.
‘You can end up with what I call a heroic IT department; one that copes with all the systems and can turn its hand to anything, but which is so busy fire-fighting, it actually creates more problems than it solves.’
The key challenge that SMEs face when using technology, then, is creating the structure and processes required to realise the benefits.
Such structures may involve using a formal process improvement tool, such as the IT Infrastructure Library (Itil), to improve the way your IT department operates, or it might be a less formal process of defining and auditing the services you provide the business.
‘It is really just about saying what do we do, what processes does that involve, what are we doing well, and how can it be improved?’ says Russell.
‘It might just be that more people, a new application, or simply a new way of approaching a core process is what it takes to improve things.’
As well as organisational challenges, SMEs must compete with larger organisations who have bigger resources and budgets. That means knowing what technologies to deploy, and the areas in which they will deliver the greatest benefits.
One of the key technologies in this respect is customer relationship management (CRM) software, which can provide SMEs with a single view of each customer, potentially letting companies identify profitable customers, spot cross-selling and up-selling opportunities, and improve customer service.
Thompson says that as an SME, you will have fewer customers than a larger organisation, so it is more important that you maintain good relationships with clients. ‘The old saying about it being cheaper to keep a customer than find a new one still applies,’ he says.
Just Good Business (JGB), a small venture capital firm in the north of England, competes with larger investment boutiques from across the UK.
Relationship-building is a constant challenge – particularly because JGB has a smaller margin of error than many of its competitors. If a business that JGB invests in experiences problems that are not identified early, that investment could potentially be in jeopardy.
To help address the issue, JGB recently invested in a hosted CRM application from Microsoft, which tracks all activities of the companies that JGB deals with.
Since installing the software, JGB estimates that it has saved more than £20,000 through better security, greater reliability, improved visibility and speed of response, and through faster communication.
This experience of CRM is pretty typical of medium-sized companies, says Thompson – Gartner’s research shows that smaller companies often see more dramatic benefits from CRM technology than larger organisations. According to the analyst, 65 per cent of small and medium companies claim to achieve a full return on their investment in CRM technology within 12 months.
However, great customer service still means very little if nobody answers the phone when a customer calls.
Adrian Tatum, mobile solutions director with service provider Computacenter, says smaller companies might have occasions when every worker is out visiting customers.
‘I think that is why we’re seeing very rapid adoption of mobile and wireless technologies in this sector,’ he says.
One of the problems that smaller firms can face when using mobile technology is not understanding how fundamentally the system could change their business, says Tatum.
‘A lot of SMEs think that mobile computing is all about BlackBerry devices, but you’re coming at it from completely the wrong direction,’ he says.
‘You need to know where you want the business to go, what information will that require, and how quickly.’
For example, if you have a field service team and you would like them to be able to complete repairs more quickly, you could use GPRS and handheld computers to provide real-time access to your spare parts ordering system.
If the problem is that sales staff are on the road all week, and are sending in customer orders by post, you might consider investing in laptops and data cards so that sales staff can send data over the internet from their home or hotel rooms.
‘Our research suggests that companies that do not do this sort of upfront planning spend more than twice as much on mobile computing as a result,’ says Carl Smiley,’ an analyst with Forrester Research.
‘Knowing what you need means you are less likely to spend money on unnecessary technology later.’
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