Digitalisation Out Of Reach For Many Australian Small Businesses

Large organisations have been running digital transformation programs for years, using IT to change the way they do business. Small businesses would benefit a lot from digitalisation as well. But a majority of small business owners in Australia feel the technology used to facilitate digitalisation is way too expensive for them to adopt, according to a survey by Cisco.

Cisco surveyed over 500 Australian small business owners and found that while 72% believed their company would benefit from increasing the use of technology to support digitalisation, 69 percent of them think it will be way too expensive to do so.

That 69% of small business owners still feel that regularly using IT support to facilitate digitalisation at the same level as enterprises is out of reach for them financially. Around 52% also feel like they’re limited by their business’ lack of technology expertise, research or knowledge.

That’s not surprising given that 70% of respondents said they would like more IT expertise in their business, 31% said their companies don’t have any IT resources at all, 50% rely on internal IT resources but 81% said that consists of untrained staff members who are just good at technology.

“Embracing the challenges and dealing with the disruption of digitisation requires SMBs to adopt technology that drives growth through competitive advantages such as agility or greater productivity,” Cisco commercial sales director for Australia and New Zealand Tiffany Wright said in a statement. “This is crucial when fighting for business against incumbent enterprises or protecting business from new market entrants.”

If you’re a small business owner? How are you using technology to change the way you do businesses? Let us know in the comments.


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