Cloud vendors have been touting the benefits associated with hosted solutions for years, promising to deliver on high expectations. Supporting documentation is always around to back up the claims, but most is produced by the vendor or other party with vendor ties. Finding valid data to support big claims can be a challenge, but the Boston Consulting Group (BSG) is providing clear and unbiased insight into outcomes for SMEs.
The small to medium enterprise is adopting cloud technologies as a way to streamline processes and lower the total cost of operations, especially in communications. It’s helping to drive the demand for hosted VoIP. Now BSG findings show that small businesses adopting these and other technologies are faring much better than those who have opted to take the “wait and see” approach.
Microsoft (News - Alert) commissioned BSG to examine the role technology and IT can play in enabling the small business to grow faster than its peers. After the study was complete, the firm concluded that the advent of the cloud has allowed SMEs access to many of the same technologies that once were afforded by only the giant multinational operations. Even with this reality, the adoption of the latest in IT by smaller companies has been decidedly uneven, creating a new digital divide that threatens to widen the performance gap among the companies that fit this description.
As highlighted in a recent CMO release, the firm benchmarked 15 economies where SMEs account for as much as 72 percent of GDP and up to 82 percent of total employment. In five of the largest and most diverse economies, SME decision makers were also surveyed. It was found that these leaders are all heavy users of cloud services, compared with followers and laggards with zero use of cloud services.
BCG also identified a strong correlation between business performance and technology adoption. Leaders in the two developed economies of Germany and the U.S. grew their revenue on average by 17 percent each year between 2010 and 2012. Employee numbers grew by 12 percent. By comparison, laggards achieved revenue growth of just four percent and job growth of just two percent. Followers returned revenue growth at seven percent and job growth at four percent.
The lack in uptake of IT by some SMEs is seen as a problem that extends beyond the limiting effect it can have on the individual businesses. Improving the performance of laggard and follower SMEs would also boost the economies of the countries in which they operate, providing an even stronger argument for the adoption of hosted VoIP solutions.
In the U.S., for instance, increasing the growth rate of U.S. tech laggards and followers could conceivably increase their revenues by roughly $360 billion. SMEs in the U.S. could also create the opportunity for more than 2 million new jobs, nearly doubling what was created in 2012.
The point here is that hosted VoIP creates many more benefits than simply reducing the cost of communications or streamlining processes. The impact could expand to the region, the nation and even the world.
Edited by Blaise McNamee