In the small and medium enterprise (SME) space in India, a moderate upgrade in the use of technology can not only grow these businesses faster but also create a huge number of jobs.

This has been found in a recent study done on the global SME sector for Microsoft by the Boston Consulting Group (BCS). It found that in the SME sector 40 per cent of the businesses embrace latest technology, including the use of cloud services. These were termed “leaders”. Next came the “followers”, another 40 per cent. These had an online presence, a domain name and a web presence, but none of them uses cloud services.

Of the remaining 20 per cent, classified “laggards”, very few had a domain name and no web presence for their companies. They might be using a computer but for accounting or other purposes.

Discussing the impact of the BCG study, commissioned by Microsoft with Business Line at a DWEN (Dell Women’s Entrepreneur Network) conference held in Austin last week, Cheryl Kelly, General Manager of Worldwide Small Business Marketing, Microsoft, said the study found that even if you can get 15 per cent of the “followers” and 30 per cent of the “laggards” in the SME segment to catch up with the leaders and use better technological tools such as cloud services, they could potentially boost their revenues and global economy by a whopping $770 billion and create an additional six millions jobs worldwide. Companies using technology, particularly cloud, grow about 15 per cent faster and create double the jobs, found the study.

Cloud allows such businesses to escape the cost of installing and maintaining significant hardware and software for server operations.

On India, Kelly said that if the non-tech savvy small and medium businesses moved to tech upgrades, it would have an impact of $56 billion for India. And, an additional one million jobs could be created.

Impact on India “We found that if India just brought 15 per cent of the laggards to the level of technology leaders, this change could happen.”

Interestingly, again in India, women heading companies, even though in a minority, are 1.5 times more likely to be technology leaders, she added.

(The writer was in Austin,US, at the invitation of Dell)

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