Member Article

SMEs want more visibility

New research has found SMEs are struggling to obtain a holistic view of their business, with an overwhelming eight out of ten (79%) requiring more visibility across multiple areas within their organisation. Project development (83%), transparency of data (80%) and cost efficiency (78%), being areas most in need of improvement.

In relation to business productivity, the survey also revealed that while almost all organisations (98%) expect to allocate appropriate resources to clients, only 50% track time with software. Of those businesses who do, over three quarters (76%) would like more visibility of time usage, where close to half (45%) have found time management improves after implementing an operational management solution.

The survey found one in two small businesses (50%) are struggling to integrate multiple operational management solutions, while nearly all organisations (95%) identify a need for one piece of integrated software.

The survey polled 100 decision makers from SMEs of between 10 and 100 employees. The research found all of them run an average two pieces of operational management software supporting business processes such as invoicing, time management and task management.

Chris May, Founder and Managing Director for IT specialists, Mayden, which established the Orbit system to support its own business, comments:

“Having one piece of software that does everything you need has huge benefits for small businesses. Of the organisations surveyed, 47% are using unconnected pieces of operational management software, where most are trying to fit a number of different pieces together. However, this means organisations struggle for a holistic view, which increases the risk of missing crucial information that can impact business productivity.”

All organisations (100%) also agreed that after implementing operational management systems (either connected or unconnected), they have seen some aspect of their business productivity improve as a result.

This research was conducted by new enterprise system, Orbit.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Chris May .