{"id":11542,"date":"2016-09-26T07:08:52","date_gmt":"2016-09-26T07:08:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/me\/?p=11542"},"modified":"2016-09-26T07:08:52","modified_gmt":"2016-09-26T07:08:52","slug":"emea-smes-digital-implementation-outpacing-company-strategy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/me\/2016\/09\/26\/emea-smes-digital-implementation-outpacing-company-strategy\/","title":{"rendered":"SMEs digital implementation outpacing company strategy?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">The leadership of \u00a0small and medium enterprises (SME) across organisations in Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) are keen to integrate digital and mobile technologies into the workplace, but over half of the same organisations do not have a strategy in place to achieve this, new research suggests.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s2\"><a href=\"http:\/\/media.ne.cision.com\/l\/dvrsxeav\/www.arubanetworks.com\/\">Aruba<\/a><\/span><span class=\"s1\">, a HPE\u00a0company, conducted a study\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/file\/\/\/C:\/Users\/Colin%20Saldanha\/Dropbox\/PR\/Aruba%20Networks\/Press%20Releases\/September%202016\/SME%20Research%20Study%20PR\/Aruba%20SME%20Digital%20Workplace_FINAL.docx#_ftn1\"><span class=\"s2\">[1]<\/span><\/a> of over 500 SMEs across EMEA, finding that 66% of SME senior management believe that optimising the cloud, applications and mobile devices, thereby creating the Digital Workplace, is a strategic priority. However in spite of this, half of all organisations (50%) have no foreseeable plans to implement such a strategy.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Key findings from the report include:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul class=\"ul1\">\n<li class=\"li1\"><b><\/b><span class=\"s1\"><b>A quarter of SMEs are already thinking digital:<\/b>\u00a0 26% of respondents plan to invest in the Digital Workplace over the next year.<\/span><\/li>\n<li class=\"li1\"><b><\/b><span class=\"s1\"><b>But security and cost raise concerns<\/b>: half of SMEs (50%) cite data security as the major barrier between their organisation and the Digital Workplace. More another 30%, believe cost is the key issue.<\/span><\/li>\n<li class=\"li1\"><b><\/b><span class=\"s1\"><b>Half of SMEs are moving towards mobile working:<\/b> 30% are investing in technology designed to optimise the mobile workforce, while a further 20% have plans to make similar purchases.<\/span><\/li>\n<li class=\"li1\"><b><\/b><span class=\"s1\"><b>Finance and Healthcare may provide the next digital SMEs<\/b>: 80% of workers in finance and healthcare think that the Digital Workplace will be of importance to their organisation.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Across all respondents, the number one reason given for investing in the mobile workplace is to achieve an increase in productivity, efficiency and flexibility, followed by the better access and sharing of data and improved team collaboration.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Jeremy Lye, European Marketing Manager at financial asset management company Schroders UK, added: <b>\u00a0<\/b>\u201cThe more advanced digital technology and analytics we have invested in has increased our understanding of clients\u2019 purchasing behaviours. It\u2019s also very important to have flexibility to work from anywhere. Our clients are based across various parts of the country which means our sales people can now visit clients at their offices and access business data just as if they were in their office. This has improved sales productivity and clients are happier.\u201d<b>\u00a0<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>The opportunity for expert partnership<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">In order to realise the benefits of the Digital Workplace, SME respondents in the report recognise the need to deploy better security policies and for IT departments to establish control of all devices being used for work. To understand how to achieve this, 85% intend to seek the advice of a local IT partner.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Seeking out expert support is the number one strategy that SMEs plan to adopt in pursuit of the Digital Workplace, over and above peers, analyst reports or web searches.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Osama AlHaj-Issa, Regional Channel Director, Middle East and Turkey at Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise Company, said: \u201cSMEs that are embracing the Digital Workplace are reaping the benefits, but it\u2019s a tough ask for any IT manager to marry the ambitions of senior management with their limited budgets and perceived security concerns. Local IT partners have a huge opportunity to become trusted advisors that can help SMEs overcome these challenges, helping them to implement digital and mobile technologies that can improve business productivity, enhance customer experience and achieve increased revenues.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">==================================================================================================<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><a href=\"http:\/\/file\/\/\/C:\/Users\/Colin%20Saldanha\/Dropbox\/PR\/Aruba%20Networks\/Press%20Releases\/September%202016\/SME%20Research%20Study%20PR\/Aruba%20SME%20Digital%20Workplace_FINAL.docx#_ftnref1\">[1]<\/a><\/span><span class=\"s2\"> Study was conducted by TREND Consulting Ltd on behalf of Aruba. Interviews were done with 560 senior business and IT executives within SMEs (25-1000 employees) across the EMEA region within di\u00adfferent industries to find out what the reality is in the Finance, Retail, Engineering, Hospitality, and Healthcare sectors in large and small countries.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The leadership of \u00a0small and medium enterprises (SME) across organisations in Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) are keen to integrate digital and mobile technologies into the workplace, but over half of the same organisations do not have a strategy in place to achieve this, new research suggests. Aruba, a HPE\u00a0company, conducted a study\u00a0[1] of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":11543,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[114,33,2823,1354,285,76,153],"class_list":["post-11542","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-insights","tag-aruba","tag-byod","tag-digital-workplace","tag-hpe","tag-mobile","tag-mobility","tag-smes"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11542","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/20"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11542"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11542\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11543"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11542"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11542"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11542"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}