New report shows
Design and innovation consultancy Adaptive Lab today releases its ‘SMEs: Smallish Misunderstood Enterprises’ report, highlighting SME attitudes towards their services providers, including utilities, telecoms networks, financial services. The study uncovers that a lack of empathy and generic product offering from large corporations drives dissatisfaction and barriers to growth for the SME sector.
Identifying a number of disconnects between what SMEs expect from their service providers and the reality, Adaptive Lab’s study reveals that 56% of SMEs don’t trust corporations to understand the challenges of running a small business. 59% of business owners surveyed think that services offered by corporate service providers are ‘a one-size fits all’ and not tailored to their needs.
The report outlines how SMEs should be categorised, according to each businesses’ unique ambition and complexity. One size does not fit all as over 60% of the high ambition businesses feel underserved and undervalued by their big service providers, while over half (55%) of mid ambition SMEs admit they believe that large corporate service providers often make them feel small and unimportant.
In addition, the report exposes more warning signs for traditional providers. Over half of SMEs (51%) said they would trust challenger and start up businesses to provide their services. SMEs prefer smaller, more empathetic service providers, who know what it’s like. Alongside this perception, 58% perceive a smaller business as more innovative and agile in developing products for their needs than a big corporate.
Chris Moisan, Principal at Adaptive Lab commented: “Working with business service providers we saw the same thing time and time again. Most service providers approach the SME segment as a homogeneous community, ignoring their diversity and unique needs. Is the definition of an SME still fit for purpose? The small and medium business sector is a mighty force in our economy. The opportunities are huge for any business willing to rethink their approach and reimagine services for SMEs so we wanted to better understand the issues and scope of possibilities for both sides”.
Leave a Comment