In some ways, small and medium-sized businesses are better than large ones

According to a Ricoh-sponsored study, European SMEs are advancing at a faster pace in the competition for key digital transformation compared to larger businesses.

Nearly one in three small businesses (64%) believe they will be able to digitize their existing paper documents within three years, compared to just under half of larger businesses.

78 percent of small and medium-sized business executives say their employees can access the documents they need on their mobile devices supported by their workplace. The digital transformation will enable SMEs to meet the challenges of the future, to create an even more productive and efficient workplace model, allowing for ever-expanding knowledge sharing by employees and flexible adaptation to customer needs. However, the study pointed to a riskier area for SMEs, with a higher proportion (62%) of their employees choosing their personal drive to store information than is the case for larger businesses (55%), which is of course also a significant proportion. Such activities can prevent the benefits of effective information sharing, and can even result in the loss of valuable, business-critical documents for important business insights when a particular employee leaves the company.

The growing presence of iWorker (a smart employee) —reliable and skilled employees who can access the business and information they need for their customers at any time of the day — will determine, among other things, the removal of such barriers. According to the survey, by 2018, 30 percent of small and medium-sized business executives plan that a larger percentage of their employees will already meet the iWorker definition. However, to achieve this, an even longer journey is needed to create an even more collaborative and flexible work environment.

The study also shows that the main obstacle for SMEs is the lack of access to documents and other important information systems from mobile devices, which is particularly detrimental to efficient information sharing.