ëWant it nowí culture piling pressure on small businesses

- 55% of SME managers say it is more difficult to run a successful business than it was three years ago

- Over a third (35%) say customers are more demanding than ever before

- 33% say colleagues, customers and suppliers expect faster response times

Over half (55%) of SME managers say it is more difficult to run a successful small business than it was three years ago, according to research conducted by YouGov for T-Mobile. The survey reveals that rising customer expectations are forcing a ëwant it nowí culture that is piling pressure on Britainís small businesses. When asked what issues contribute most to operational challenges, over a third (35%) of SME managers say customers are more demanding and 33% say colleagues, customers and suppliers expect faster response times.

Amid this increasingly demanding business environment, SME managers think that because they arenít making better use of deadtime - unproductive time spent travelling on work business or waiting for meetings to start - their business could be missing out on 60,000 a year. Being more productive during deadtime would have the knock-on effect of allowing them to respond to customers faster - and make more money in the process. Red tape also remains a frustration for over a third (39%) of those surveyed.

Mobile working
To tackle the challenges of the growing ëwant it nowí culture, SME managers are having to work smarter, and are turning to mobile technology to provide faster and more efficient responses to their customers. According to the research, over half (52%) of all SME managers now provide mobile technology for their staff and 83% agree that this has enabled them to respond to customer queries more quickly.

58% of respondents also agree that mobile technology enables them to process orders faster - which rises to 70% of those that provide their staff with access to Wi-Fi HotSpots.

Hartwood Services, a provider of telecommunications engineering services, has seen dramatic improvements in productivity and improved customer relationships after providing staff with access to Wi-Fi HotSpots. With a large proportion of its engineers geographically dispersed around the UK, it is vital that they are able to remain in contact with central office in order to deliver reports and feedback on site audits quickly and effectively. ìIt used to take us seven days to complete each customer audit from start to finish, but because of the improved communications and data transfers that the T-Mobile HotSpot service provides, we can now complete these tasks significantly faster, within four to five days,î says Arran Landregan, Operations Manager, Hartwood Services. ìOverall, we estimate that we are now over 35% more efficient as a result.î

Derek Williamson, Head of Business Marketing, T-Mobile UK, says, ìThe rise of the internet has given birth to a ëwant it nowí culture - customers expect an immediate response to every enquiry. This is forcing SMEs to operate in a different way, and use all the tools at their disposal to be more productive and efficient. The ability to fulfil orders and respond to customers as quickly as possible is of paramount importance, which is why SMEs are starting to recognise that mobile technology can have a significant impact on their bottom line.î