A new report commissioned by Salesforce, Digital Opportunities for Today’s Small Business, has identified the areas of improvement for SMEs and the potential benefits of digital solutions.
The research revealed that the digital age is changing the way business is conducted, with face-to-face transactions having fallen as a proportion of sales.
It also shows that SMEs still have some way to go fully embrace and maximize the potential of digital solutions, as evidenced by the following key findings:
- 48 per cent of SMEs believe they have good knowledge of customers, but only 22 per cent report using personalised marketing.
- 70 per cent of SMEs don’t have a CRM system.
- SMEs which adopt CRM have 44 per cent higher revenue than those with no system or a basic system.
The report, put together by Deloitte Access Economics, was based on a survey of over 500 Australia and New Zealand SMEs (defined as having up to 100 employees) across 18 industry sectors.
Eileen O’Mara, Senior Vice President Salesforce APAC said, “Our report shows that small businesses in Australia need to rethink their investment in technology in order to remain competitive in the future, with the shift to digital accelerating as face-to-face customer sales and interactions decline.”
“(It) identified there’s an opportunity for small businesses to take the personal relationships they have with customers and scale them. Only one in five businesses regularly use social media, and 70 per cent having no system or only a basic system to record and analyse sales, marketing and customer service information,” O’Mara added.
“With new technologies, like artificial intelligence (AI), that are seamlessly integrated, small businesses don’t have to think about building them in. With AI, business owners can automate basic tasks, enabling them to work smarter, better connect with their customers and future-proof their business,” O’Mara concluded.
Report author and Deloitte Access Economics partner, John O’Mahony said, “In today’s world of the connected consumer, we are seeing an accelerated shift from face-to-face to online transactions, with businesses reporting that face-to-face sales declined from 45 per cent in 2015/16 to 39 per cent in 2016/17, replaced by sales via email and online platforms. In this environment, there are clear benefits for businesses using CRM systems to keep track of their customers and transactions. Our modelling estimates that firms with CRM systems have on average 44 per cent higher revenue than those with no system or basic systems.”
Inside Small Business
