Last year 2019, Salesforce conducted the third edition of the report on trends for small and medium-sized businesses (between 2 and 200 employees). The study gathers the opinions of more than 2,000 managers and owners of SMEs around the world.
SMEs are the main drivers of today's economic growth and the main objectives of the report were to determine the motivations, challenges, obstacles and goals of small and medium-sized business leaders, analyze how demographics influence the SME experience and the role of technology in meeting customer expectations.
Influence of demographics on SME experience.
The study shows that entrepreneurship emerges from two fundamental needs: to have their own business (55% of those surveyed) and to be able to reconcile work and family thanks to flexible working hours (36%).
Although those were the most common answers, there are other reasons that closely follow the two above: to take advantage of a business opportunity, to earn more money and promotion possibilities.
Approximately three out of five SME leaders face challenges such as hiring the right talent, accessing capital and finding enough time in the day to complete all their tasks. Most SME leaders are motivated individuals with a wide diversity of roles, but there are key differences in their experiences conditioned by age and gender. Access to capital is the number one difficulty in entrepreneurship today for women leaders, but is second for men.
According to SME leaders, the key skills for success are self-discipline, communication skills and motivation. These soft skills rank higher in the survey results than job-specific skills such as market knowledge or financial management skills.
The role of technology in meeting customer expectations
Getting new customers is a top concern for any business, so when it comes to investment planning, SMBs prioritize capabilities that enable them to deliver the personalized experiences that customers demand. CRM systems are a top priority in the technology budgets of growing SMBs (139%) versus those in decline.
The technology is changing rapidly for SMEs as well. The majority of SMBs using CRM started applying this technology in the last two years, and the number of SMBs planning to adopt AI in the future is three times higher than those already using it. Growing SMEs are more likely to use CRM, marketing automation and AI technologies.
These data show that the most active SMEs are clear that they must invest in advanced technologies to face the future with guarantees and that trust in their relationships with customers, employees and suppliers is a clear differentiator.
