According to 216 U.S. SMB IT decision-makers surveyed, 46% of their business content currently remains on paper today. Nonetheless they are moving along the digital transformation path, if at a slower pace than larger Enterprises as they are more worried about the cost of conversion. Our study found that cost was the number one hurdle associated with converting to digital processes. Furthermore, SMBs main cost concerns are training, time constraints, legal requirements and IT resources. In addition, survey results also found that 32% of SMB decision makers indicted a preference for paper for business processes. This was most prevalent in the Manufacturing, Education and Prof. Service’s sectors.
As far as initiatives or policies to reduce paper are concerned, those SMBs surveyed have mostly shifted to simple digital processes, such as sharing document internally and externally through e-mail and document collaboration via document repositories or default printing on both sides of a document. While more complex digital processes such as the use of digital signatures or an internal mandate to reduce the use of paper are up and coming, they do not play a dominant role with these SMBs yet.
SMBs provide the largest opportunity in North America to sell office equipment, yet the user group is behind enterprises in the digital transformation path. The good news is that vendors can learn from adoption processes for enterprises and adapt these for SMBs.
This is a just a sampling of the survey findings within the SMB environment. A more detailed analysis of our key findings can be found at: http://client.keypointintelligence.com/bliQ/InfoCenter/Document/Item/8329a85a-328f-4694-99c8-5fe139ca742c
