Recession Insights - Winning Behaviour

It is not just lack of investment in technology that characterises under performance in SMEs. Our research found that SMEs are also more likely to have reduced rather than increased training budgets over the past 12 months (37% have reduced training budgets compared to 24% who have increased them).

in a direct reversal, however, we also identified a new breed of 'Super SMEs’ (those that are actually booming through the slowdown) which are more likely to have increased (rather than decreased) training investment (39% have spent more on their training in the past 12 months while 28% reduced their training spend).

Similarly, while overall SME investment in marketing fell in the past 12 months (36% reduced marketing spend while 32% increased it), amongst our Super SMEs, 43% increased their marketing spend, compared to less than one in five who reduced it. There was also a net decrease overall in IT infrastructure spend. 29% spent less on this, while 27% spent more. Amongst Super SMEs 47% spent more on IT infrastructure and just 16% spent less.

The trends remain the same for employee benefits, flexible working and communication technology and new product development. In each instance the general trend amongst SMEs was to reduce spend. However amongst those SMEs which are currently experiencing growth, or have greater confidence in their long-term future, spend was up across the board.


Extract from: A Guide To Plain Sailing Through The Recession - Plantronic
s - www.plantronics.com.

The full guide can be downloaded here: http://www.sme-guide.co.uk/

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