New study reveals SMBs are losing over $24 billion in productivity every year, due to non-technical employees having to manage a company’s IT solutions.
An AMI-Partners study commissioned by Microsoft found that small businesses are losing more than $24 billion in productivity every year as a result of non-technical employees, also known as involuntary IT managers (IITMs), being taken away from their primary business role to manage the company’s IT solutions.
The study revealed that Australian IITMs lose 3.1 hours of time every week managing IT solutions instead of tending to their day-to-day job responsibilities. This adds up to the loss of 161 hours of productivity every year.
While Australian IITMs recorded the lowest level of lost productivity hours out of the five countries surveyed – Australia, Brazil, Chile, India and the US – the loss still represents a significant economic impact to Australian small businesses’ bottom lines.
In light of these results, Gianpaolo Carraro, SMB Director, Microsoft Australia, recommends small to medium businesses to embrace cloud technology, so they can still get IT services, but don’t have to manage it themselves.
“Time spent on IT management is not the best time spent for driving profitability for an organisation. There are couple options for them – one option is looking at the cloud to get the services of IT without having to manage the IT themselves. The second option is to engage with Microsoft partners, for instance, that have solutions available for them who can look after the management of that on their behalf,” said Carraro.
“Again at the top level is realising that small and medium businesses, the more they spend on their core business as opposed to IT, the more likely they are able to be successful in their core business.”
Other key findings include:
- Australian small businesses are more content with the status quo: Fifty-five percent of small businesses in Australia are unlikely to change the way IT is managed, compared to a global average of 37 percent.
- Australian IITMs are the least inclined to shift more IT budget to the cloud, at only 14 percent, and are the least likely to purchase integrated online productivity suites, at only 15 percent.
The complete ITTM survey can be found on Microsoft’s website.
