Leader: Listen to SMEs

Despite the fact small businesses account for the majority of corporate entities, they are considered a niche by most IT vendors because their needs and methods of procuring IT are so different from the big businesses most vendors cater to.

It was the aim of investigating these behaviours that led silicon.com to launch a special report on how small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs) buy and use technology.

As part of the report, analysts at Quocirca pointed out that SMEs do indeed have unique habits - including who makes IT purchasing decisions (usually an FD or MD) and the fact they're unlikely to purchase pricey analysts' reports.

One thing most SMEs have in common is a lack of dedicated IT and telecoms staff so we looked at two areas smaller organisations could use some advice - the headline-grabbing but often misunderstood world of open source and the increasingly complex arena of telecom services.

First silicon.com contributor Danny Bradbury asked whether small businesses should embrace open source software and, if they chose that route, which applications make the most sense.

Next contributor Stewart Baines demystified the numerous telecoms options for small businesses - from hosted services to VoIP to even going 'all mobile'.

Interest in selling IT to SMEs seems to peak every few years, with the conversation largely focused on how vendors can learn about SMEs' purchasing habits and thus better communicate with them. But the tendency is to lump them all together with one set of attributes.

The truth is that when we say SME, we're speaking about organisations as large as 1,000 employees and as small as five. Each organisation in this range is going to have its own needs and is more likely to identify itself by the vertical sector it operates in than by the size of its staff.

It's only by getting to know an individual organisation that vendors can understand how to sell to them - but since there are so many SMEs and the deals we're talking about are relatively small, vendors can't justify the time this would entail. So we're back to relying on generalisations.

But only by changing this approach will vendors break through to SME customers - and put an end to the recurring cycle of courting SMEs but never quite winning them over.

If you work at a business with fewer than 1,000 employees, please let us know what your main concerns are when buying and using IT by emailing editorial@silicon.com