What Is Restricting SMEs From Adopting New Technological Changes?

Irrespective of size, change is important for every business to continue growing and stay in competition with others. It may be disruptive in the beginning to adapt to the new changes, but ultimately it leads to increased growth opportunities and productivity.

Industrial centrifugal fansAs the technology is changing everyday, so does the customer needs. Customers who were satisfied with basic mobiles few years back are today getting frustrated with the slow Internets on their smartphones. This growing demand for creating new products and services is giving many opportunities for companies to work on different technologies and develop innovative things for satisfying the customer needs. While it is easy for big businesses and organizations to fully leverage technological changes to meet these customer demands, some small companies hesitate and stay back due to many reasons.

Habituated to Old Methods
Some SMEs are still using traditional methods of business because they are used to doing things in a specific manner and do not want to deviate from it. For them adopting to new technologies is like working 50-50 chances because they are not positive whether the new method is going to work for sure. Forget the latest technologies, some SMEs do not even have their business websites because they don’t understand how it could help their business. They are more comfortable in using business models that have already been established rather than go for new strategies in their work process.

Afraid of Losses
Some SMEs, especially those who are still establishing their portfolios in the respective business verticals are very cautious about adapting new technological changes in their business. Even though they have capability for change, they don’t rush into conclusions with regards to implementing new technological models. This is because they are afraid of losing investment rather than getting excited about the gains that they would achieve by implementing them. Employing new technology for business also requires extra resources such as man power and revenues for maintaining the systems. This will add up as an additional burden for small companies who are already troubled with financial constraints.

Less Technical know-how
SMEs are typically dynamic and have organizational flexibility to create new business strategies. Sometimes they identify the importance of technology but hesitate to change because they understand the risks associated with upgrading their existing systems with the latest ones. They have to be highly proficient to tackle the technical challenges otherwise they may end up losing their entire business efforts. For example, moving to cloud can improve efficiency and growth of business, but very few SMEs have enforced it. One of the main reasons is, they are not sure if they can efficiently handle the challenges that come up while implementing this new technology.

Updated: August 26, 2021 — 5:03 pm