SA SMEs, social media, and the cloud
A new survey shows that a quarter (24%) of South African small to medium enterprises (SMEs) use social media as an online business service.
The survey, conducted by World Wide Worx, questioning 1,400 SMEs, found that the proportion of SMEs using the cloud is 27% overall, substantially up from 9% in 2012.
“What’s surprising is not that one in four are using social media, but that three in four aren’t,” said principal researcher Arthur Goldstuck, MD of World Wide Worx.
“Given the hype around it, you might expect more to be using social media than the cloud – but it demonstrates once again that SMEs also need a clear value proposition before they invest in new services,” he said.
Of those not yet using cloud, asked if they expect to take it up, just 2% gave a definite ‘yes’, but the potential usage was far higher: another 20% said it depended on business needs. A further 30% are unsure.
“If the business case can be clearly demonstrated to these potential users, adoption will move closer to 50%,” said Goldstuck. “There is a possibility that cloud adoption could double in the next 12-24 months. It is all about a clear and obvious value proposition.”
The SME Survey 2014 revealed that 38% of respondents said they had used government support services for SMEs in the last 12 months, while 17% had done so more than three times in this period. Exactly half report being very happy with those services, with a further 34% somewhat happy.
Furthermore, 44% of all respondents expressed high confidence in using government support services for SMEs. This compared to 34% in 2007 and just 12% in 2004.
“We’ve seen dramatic improvement in perceptions of government services over the past decade,” said Goldstuck. “Such improvements tended to follow restructuring of the services, showing that the evolution of such services has had positive outcomes.”
SME Survey 2014 is sponsored by the Small Enterprise Development Agency (SEDA), Business Connexion and Microsoft.
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