Member Article

Empowering the Real Little Britain

Did you know that there are over 20 million enterprises currently operating across Europe? 99% of these are small businesses (SMEs). While an SME is classed as having 250 occupied personnel or less, the vast majority (92%) are considered ‘micro’ enterprises with less than 10 members of staff[1].

Latest figures show that 5.2 million SMEs in the UK Gross Value Added 473 billion EUROS – 49.8% of the UK economy[2]. Of these small businesses 5 million were micro. What is awe-inspiring about these small yet innovative powerhouses is that they have either survived the recent global recession or been born out of it - 500,000 entrepreneurs took the plunge in 2013 alone.[3]

However, all too often these businesses are so focused on growth, product or service development and keeping up with customer demands that, unsurprisingly, many pay little attention to their back office function. It is only then as the business starts to grow and move beyond the honeymoon period that they discover a tangled web of multiple services and suppliers that is both difficult to manage and costly.

Managing multiple services

Recent research by BaseKit[4], found that 51% of small companies felt that their business would perform better if they didn’t have to worry about multiple suppliers, with 40% saying that they have to manage multiple bill payments each month.

Alarmingly a third of SMEs have ‘no idea’ how many external suppliers they use and of those that did, 40% said they use more than three suppliers. This means that they are not only wasting valuable and probably limited resource managing these suppliers but in all likelihood are paying for services that overlap and could work more efficiently.

Bundle services to reduce workload and costs

The simplest solution in addressing this challenge is to learn from our personal lives as consumers and apply this to SMEs. Bundling services makes them easier to manage and more cost effective,

Companies no longer require all their staff to work from one location to deliver a successful and satisfactory service to customers. So empowering remote workers with access to the right resources and decent connectivity is a must. If an SME wants lightning speed fibre and optimal cloud services to increase efficiencies and save money why shouldn’t they? By bundling services the savings are multiple, less to pay on the service bills, fewer suppliers to manage and therefore less time spent on admin at the end of each month.

For more information and advice on bundling services, please visit: www.4d-dc.com

[1] http://www.brusselsnetwork.be/eu-news-m/563-smes-contribution-to-a-dynamic-europe.html

[2] Small businesses and the UK economy, 09/12/14, Economic Policy and Statistics report by Matthew Ward and Chris Rhodes

[3] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sponsored/business/sme-home/business-tips/10577974/benefits-starting-business-in-recession.html

[4] http://www.basekit.com/blog/smes-struggling-to-manage-external-suppliers

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by 4D-DC .