Small but mighty

In a challenging environment for business, it’s more important than ever to support our small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) customers. That’s why this year we are launching a campaign to help our SME customers to maximise their growth potential.

As part of this,we have partnered with the British Chambers of Commerce to research what SMEs see as the biggest barriers and drivers to growth will be this year.

Here’s some quick stats from the 1,200 businesses we surveyed:

• More than a third of UK firms expect to grow in the next year, while 41 per cent forecast ‘business as usual’ and 22 per cent expect to downsize
• Four in 10 businesses see the UK domestic market as the biggest opportunity whilst 22% said the international market was one of the most significant growth drivers.
• Online remains a key driver of growth for businesses – firms expect proportion of e-commerce sales to increase by 25 per cent

Urban based businesses were mostly likely to expect growth with domestic demand expected to be the top driver of growth.

The research highlighted the early signs of SMEs adopting AI, with one in five businesses saying new technologies will help them drive growth.

The research also revealed that trends for increased web sales continue to grow, with businesses who sell partly online saying they expect their proportion of digital sales to increase by more than a quarter in the next three years.

‘For SMEs to compete with larger companies they need to offer customers the same convenience at checkout, including choice of payment and delivery options. 

We will be increasing our support to help them reach as many customers as possible in this challenging environment’ said Chief Executive Officer, Emma Gilthorpe.

This campaign is a way of highlighting to the media and MPs the vital role we play in helping business to succeed. Our unique role as the Universal Service provider means we are a lifeline for some businesses in remote locations.

In July we will hold a parliamentary reception to launch a report summarising this research, and the findings of roundtables with SMEs held in each of the nations. This will include a set of commitments we are making to our SME customers.

We’ll be keeping you up to date as we progress with our SME campaign in the coming months.