SMEs, aware of the IT importance - Crescendo
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SMEs, aware of the IT importance

SMEs, aware of the IT importance

Due to the economic crisis that led to 15-20% decrease in CRESCENDO SME’s customers’ budgets this year, this business segment will account around 20-30% of the company’s turnover, the manager estimating a return to the 50% share of 2008 only in 2010, most likely 2011.

“We are expecting a market return in the second or third semester of 2010,” added Marius Tulea (photo), general manager of Crescendo, which plans for 2009 a turnover similar to 2008, but takes calculation also a decrease of 20%.”

Of the CRESCENDO customers, the companies with the largest investments in IT are those in production, distribution, consumer goods and services.

On the other hand, Cristian Herghelegiu, the current CEO and former Microsoft Dynamics Business Applications Division of Microsoft Romania, says the most important budgets for IT are spent by consultancy and professional services companies, as well as by national or international retail.

“At the opposite side are those with very specific activities of production or services in the field of public utilities: construction, infrastructure. IT investments are only made for those projects that can generate positive effects on the company’s liquidity in the short term, meaning up to six months. If this effect is difficult to assess or the risks are considered high the investment will not be achieved. Let’s not forget that in the case of SMEs we rarely talk about a consistent budgeting of IT investments, a more frequent being a specific approach, on immediate needs,” says Herghelegiu, estimating that this year there were companies that have reduced their IT spending with 60-70% .

But more than budgeting, an important difference is the amount spent.

For example, in CRESCENDO’s case, small companies pay for tens of thousands of euros for the services they offer, and the big ones are several hundred thousand euros.

On the other hand, of the few thousands of IBM Romania Software Division customers, 200-300 customers are large and invest in IT from several hundreds of thousands to several million, meaning the the most of them are investing a few tens of thousands of euros.

Not just the amounts spent are an important difference between how SMEs and large companies relate to IT.

“The major difference between enterprise and SME is to become aware of the importance of IT in achieving the company’s business objectives. Another difference is given by the specificity of the projects: The enterprise area invests in business applications, solutions that make the company’s business more efficient, while in the SME area we hit demands of IT & C infrastructure projects, “says Tulea.

So if small and medium businesses invest 60% of the budget in hardware, 30% in software% and 10% in services, in large companies managers allocate 50-55% of money for software, 30% hardware and 15-20% services.

“In the future there will be changes, but not significant as a percentage, so SMEs can reach 35% of software and 55% of hardware, but for increasing services there is a long way to go,” added Marius Tulea.

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