SMBs Become Increasingly Dependent on Mobile Services—Survey Says
SMBs Become Increasingly Dependent on Mobile Services—Survey Says by UCStrategies Staff
Telecommunications and IT firm Cbeyond, Inc. commissioned a survey that uncovered the increasing dependence of U.S. small and medium-sized businesses to mobile services. The recent survey also found out that 22 percent of SMBs have a formal BYOD policy in place.
The survey respondents consisted of 711 executives of business organizations with one to 250 employees and with annual revenues that range between less than $250,000 and more than $5 million. The blind survey was conducted by StrateSci during the period May 23-30, 2013.
Dubbed as the Summer 2013 Cbeyond Business Leader Snapshot, the Cbeyond survey discovered that, in addition to mobile services, the two other most critical technologies for United States SMBs include network access and desktop/laptop management. 42 percent of the polled SMB leaders recognized that doing business operations without mobile services would be a major challenge, while 34 percent saw that survival for their businesses would not be possible without mobile services.
Seventy-nine percent of respondents said that being able to work remotely while on vacation was crucial. On the other hand, the ability to work remotely on a regular basis was cited by 89 percent of respondents as important.
Strong spending on technology was unveiled by most of the polled SMB executives. Fifty-nine percent predicted a jump in technology spending this year, while only 13 percent expected a decrease in their spending.
In addition, SMB leaders viewed technology as playing significant roles in their businesses in 2013. The specific technologies believed to be very or somewhat important in the next year were ranked, in order of priority, as follows: network access (95%), mobile services (93%), desktop/laptop management (92%), applications (83%), enterprise-grade voice and broadband services (74%), and cloud services (70%). This is the first time that the importance of mobile services has surpassed that of applications.
According to the results of the Cbeyond survey, the most critical cloud services for SMB leaders are online backup (39%), company email (35%), and file sharing (32%). And emphasizing the robust need for reliable, high-bandwidth connection and secure data storage, 65 percent of polled SMB leaders said that serving customers is important and 66 percent believed the same thing can be said about data security.
In terms of security, 32 percent felt uncertain about the steps they have undertaken to safeguard their business computers and data or were not confident that their information was completely protected.
47 percent of SMB leaders who were surveyed also considered social media as vital to continued growth. Social mobile, such as Foursquare, Googlemaps, Scoutmob, Spotify, etc., were viewed by 22 percent of respondents as important for growing their businesses.
“The 2013 findings continue to shed light on the business and economic issues impacting American small and mid-sized businesses today, as reflected through regional diversity and the mix of B2B and B2C company leaders represented in our survey,” said Paul Carmody, chief marketing officer at Cbeyond. “Most interestingly, rather than accepting restrictions, SMBs are increasingly adopting technology and communication solutions – such as mobility and consumer-driven social media – that enable them to break free of traditional boundaries in order to compete and remain successful.” (KOM) Link. Link.