Press Releases

Budapest, September 19, 2016 12:00

Education is a key issue as shown in a recent research 1 performed by BellResearch based on the assignment of Telekom in order to survey the infocommunications situation of Hungarian SMBs. As the representative research conducted in the first half of 2016 has revealed, the SMB sector uses a broad range of basic level digital solutions, however they seldom or never benefit from the opportunities offered by the professional infocommunications services. Although every other SMB knows that information technology could be able to support them in their businesses, they still try to resolve IT issues using “homemade” solutions involving their acquaintances versed in the topic to a certain extent.

- The Hungarian SMB market needs significant further education to recognize the opportunities in infocommunications and to see that modern infocommunications opportunities are in fact help and opportunity to them. From time to time we conduct research on the SMB sector to familiarize with their needs, challenges and situation. We believe that they have a strong growth potential, and via our services we can also contribute to this growth. Most of Hungarian SMBs still spend less than 1% of their sales revenues on infocommunications, despite the fact that these digital services are indispensable to ensure successful and perspective operation of their businesses. – says Péter Lakatos, Chief Officer SMB of Magyar Telekom.

The data have revealed that it is the lack of knowledge that prevents growth: keeping up with digitalization is seldom identified as an important challenge.  – It is a fact that the digitalization of businesses increases efficiency and might remedy labor shortage to a certain extent; however managements of many companies do not consider modern solutions, as they do not possess the related information. – adds Péter Lakatos in connection with the results of the survey.  An important finding of the survey is that the role of personal customer support is of key importance, as businesses do not have the affinity or the time to learn the use of the new IT applications alone, so education and professional assistance is very important to them.

Approximately half of the businesses think that IT might help them respond to the perceived business challenges. According to the results of the survey, the majority of the Hungarian enterprises use “tinkered” IT solutions. Dominant majority of enterprises use in-house solutions for IT operations: in case of smaller companies it is done by the manager, whereas in case of larger SMBs there is a dedicated IT manager or colleague. They do not reject cloud-based digital services, but only a few of them are willing to pay for them, although this type of spending is dynamically increasing.

Two-thirds of the managers consider themselves to be more or less prepared in telecommunications-information technology topics, but only one fifth of them say they are truly versed in what online solutions can offer to their companies. On the other hand, half of the respondents are willing to buy all IT and telecommunications services they need from the same provider.

40% of smaller SMB companies with computer operate a website; in case of larger SMBs, this rate is 68%. At the same time, many of these websites are created by a colleague of family member. For those not having a website it is not important to acquire new clients this way, i.e. they think that in the industry they work in, personal recommendation is very important. One third of companies with computer consider important to be present in the social media with a Facebook profile of their own; the same share of them have their own social media profiles.

_{1) The research covers the business associations actually operating in the SMB sector of Hungary, the population of the research was formed by 255 thousand Hungarian businesses. (This approach is not fully identical with the SMB definition used by the Central Statistical Office). The quantitative research was conducted using the multi-grade non-proportionally stratified sampling, representative on the basis of employee headcount, business management form and geographical location of the population. In the course of the survey personal interviews were made with the decision-makers of the organizations, who had insight to the management, administration, future strategic vision and IT support of the processes [usually CEO, TDM, CFO]. Methodology: personal inquiry. 928 successful interviews were conducted during the survey} .