Potential for technology to help fuel significant revenue and job growth by SMEs

DENPASAR, INDONESIA: Tech-savvy small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) 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. and independently conducted by The Boston Consulting Group (BCG), a global management consulting firm and a leading adviser on business strategy.

The BCG report, Ahead of the Curve: Lessons on Technology and Growth From Small Business Leaders, which is being published Saturday, found there is potential for SME revenue to 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.

These same SMEs could add some 6.2 million new jobs in those countries alone. What's more, BCG believes that this association between IT adoption and growth would be consistent in countries across the world.

"SMEs are a critical growth engine for jobs and economies today, and we wanted to better understand the impact of technology on these small businesses," said Orlando Ayala, corporate VP and Microsoft chairman of Emerging Markets. "Since the economic crisis, many economies have struggled to return to strong economic growth and to create new jobs, and this research suggests strongly that greater use of advanced IT by SMEs can potentially boost both growth and employment."

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. What's more, SMEs that adopted Microsoft Cloud services grew faster than SMEs that do not use any Microsoft products.