“The Internet’s biggest impact on SMEs has been as a great leveller, making it possible for a small firm to be a global company from day one, with the reach and capabilities that once only large companies could possess.”
— Charles Roxburgh, a director at the management consultancy McKinsey, which has been researching the impact of the Web on the global economy.
“They can reach customers, find suppliers and tap talent on the other side of the world – and also use the Internet to provide significant marketing and brand muscle.”
[source: McKinsey] McKinsey’s work suggests the Internet has been a hugely powerful enabler for many SMEs: in a survey of more than 4,800 firms in 12 countries around the world, it found that those which use Web technologies grew more than twice as quickly as those with little Internet presence.
Nor are the benefits that the Internet offers available only to online businesses. While the Web’s development certainly has spawned thousands of new ventures that could not exist without it, many more conventional businesses are harnessing its power to grow far more quickly than they would ever have dreamed of had they launched in the pre-Internet world.
The Internet is now making a major contribution at every stage of the value chain, boosting productivity wherever you look. Not only has the Web fundamentally changed the way products and services are sold, but it has also revolutionized development, design, production and distribution. Even the smallest businesses now operate with the sort of geographically diversified supply chains and global workforces that until these past few years would have been the preserve of large multinational corporations.
There is more to come. McKinsey’s research suggests that on a global scale, the Internet is now responsible for 3.4 per cent of GDP (in the UK, it says, the figure is as high as 6 per cent) but will deliver much more. Large companies are part of that story, but it is small and medium sized enterprises for which the Internet presents the most exciting opportunities.