In water is wet news, Web hosting provider Bluehost just released their third study on small and medium-sized businesses, which focuses on digital adoption for business growth. They concluded from their findings four key points: sentiment is starkly different across regions and favorable in growth economies, SMBs know going digital is key to survival, the need to harness digital tools, and the importance of managing transactions from a distance. Only 15 percent of respondents in the US showed a positive outlook about the country’s economy.
Of course, that doesn’t mean they aren’t planning. Seven in 10 C-suite executives already have a cost-transformation initiative or plan to implement one within the next six months, according to an Accenture reportwhich surveyed 2,000 C-suite executives.
And to pair with water, in the sky is blue news; QuoteWerks released its 2022 Trends in IT Procurement report, highlighting the problems in product sourcing. Almost half of the respondents to the survey listed supply chain or sourcing delays as their biggest hurdle in the quote and proposal creation process. Other big pain points were product availability (19%), obtaining prices from vendors and distributors (9%), and creating configurations or determining what to quote (10%).
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Story version — conditions look rough out there; small business owners know they need technology, many business owners are investing in it, and getting technology products remains hard. This is more validating feelings than insights, although that’s not to say there isn’t utility in that.