Tech-savvy small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) have created more new jobs and drove more revenue gains over the past three years than SMEs using little technology, according to new research commissioned by Microsoft Corp.(NASDAQ:MSFT) and independently conducted by The Boston Consulting Group (BCG).
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"SMEs are a critical growth engine for jobs and economies today. There is tremendous opportunity for economic growth. Our objective is to help more SMEs transition to, and benefit from, modern IT. For customers, it means providing product training and helping SMEs understand the full range of available devices and services, but it also means community and industry investments such as skills training," said Karan Bajwa, Managing Director, Microsoft India.
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BCG's research found that over the past three years, IT-enabled SMEs, which BCG refers to as "technology leaders", grew revenues 15-percentage points faster and created twice as many jobs as SMEs that use less technology. The research also revealed that across nearly all product categories, these fast-growing SMEs use more Microsoft solutions than any other products, and that SMEs view Microsoft as the top partner for new and future technology needs. In fact, when asked what technologies survey respondents could not live without, they chose Microsoft Office as the top productivity application over all others. Moreover, SMEs that adopted Microsoft Cloud services grew faster than SMEs that do not use any Microsoft products. These companies also reported greatly improved employee mobility, scalability and agility.
"The BCG research revealed that Microsoft products and services are the No. 1 choice of these technology leaders," said Meetul Patel, Microsoft's General Manager of Small and Mid-Market Solutions and Partners organization in India.
BCG surveyed five major economies - Brazil, India, China, Germany and the United States - and found that SME revenue could grow by a combined $770 billion in the five primary countries if more SMEs could achieve the growth rates of those SMEs that use modern IT.
