CDW Small Business Driver’s Seat Report: Getting from Zero to Fifty Isn’t Bad, but Growing Companies Can Stall in Overdrive
CDW study finds major inflection point as small businesses hit the 50-99 employee milestone
VERNON HILLS, Ill. - April 29, 2008 - CDW Corporation, a leading provider of technology products and services to business, government and education, today released the 2008 CDW Small Business Driver’s Seat Report, based on a study of business growth and the role that information technology (IT) plays in small businesses. The survey identified growth issues and technology subjects that small business owners and principals consider most important and queried them for their views of how IT affects the growth of their companies. The report, which is available for downloading from CDW’s website, also identified significant differences in how minority- and women-owned small businesses manage their IT, compared to small businesses generally.
Among many findings, the CDW Small Business Driver’s Seat study found that businesses with 50 to 100 employees are in a highly dynamic and critical period of development, as their management structures grow in complexity and their applications of IT become more sophisticated. IT applications of greatest interest to small business owners during this phase relate closely to expansion issues such as business intelligence, e-commerce and online marketing, data warehousing, and business continuity/disaster recovery (BC/DR) measures.
"Small business owners have always needed many skills at the outset but then they learn to organize and delegate as their businesses mature - which has never been an easy transition," said Maria Sullivan, vice president for small business sales at CDW Corporation. "The Small Business Driver’s Seat study found that the added challenge of leveraging IT apparently creates a management inflection point at about 50 to 100 employees. When a company reaches this size, IT mastery becomes an essential driver of business growth."
The CDW study found that owner/principal attitudes and comfort with IT correlate strongly with business growth rates. For example, of respondents who "consider IT a strategic investment," 68 percent reported 10 percent or more average annual revenue growth over the past five years, compared to just 36 percent of respondents who say they are "conservative and stick with technologies that are proven useful."
Sixty-six percent of CDW Small Business Driver’s Seat survey respondents agree or strongly agree that IT is a key contributor to their business’s ability to succeed and grow, while the most common regret, voiced by 26 percent of respondents, is that they have failed to take full advantage of the technology they already own. Minority- and women-owned businesses are more likely than non-minority-owned businesses to view IT as a strategic investment, but belief that IT is a strategic investment increases significantly across all segments as companies expand toward the 100-employee milestone.
However, despite this acknowledgment of technology’s importance to business growth, 34 percent of all responding small business senior executives say they are responsible for IT decision-making and support for their company, and only 15 percent say that their company employs at least one dedicated IT professional.
"Small business owners and key personnel do not all need to be IT professionals - they only need to be astute in how they manage IT. There are associations, publications, analysts, and vendors that can be valuable resources as a company grows, and the study shows that high-growth businesses tend to hire their own IT professionals early," adds Sullivan. "CDW works continually to understand how we can help customers work through those important challenges."
About the CDW Small Business Driver’s Seat Report
CDW administered the Small Business Driver’s Seat survey during March and April 2008, targeting owners, partners or other principals in businesses with between 5 and 99 employees. CDW defines small businesses as those with fewer than 100 employees. The survey produced a total of 555 responses, with a margin of error of ±4.10 percent. Respondents included top managers from African American-, Hispanic-, women-, and non-minority-owned businesses. The Small Business Driver’s Seat Report complements CDW’s Business Rearview Mirror Report, published in August 2007, which was a comparable examination of mid-size businesses, asking them to look back on their early growth period. The CDW Business Rearview Mirror also found that leadership attitudes and strategies for IT correlate with business growth.
For a copy of the complete CDW Small Business Driver’s Seat Report, please visit www.cdw.com/driversseat.
To learn more about CDW’s resources for small businesses and the IT professionals serving them, please visit ConduIT@CDW (www.cdwconduit.com).
About CDW
CDW®, ranked No. 39 on Forbes magazine’s list of America’s Largest Private Companies, is a leading provider of technology solutions for business, government and education. CDW is a principal source of technology products and services including top name brands such as Acer, Adobe, APC, Apple, Cisco, EMC, Fujitsu, HP, IBM, Lenovo, Microsoft, Panasonic, Quantum, Samsung, Sony, Symantec, ViewSonic and Xerox.
CDW was founded in 1984 and as of December 31, 2007 employed approximately 6,300 coworkers. In 2007, the company generated sales of $8.1 billion. For more information, visit CDW.com.
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