Chapter 1: opportunity for small business in Britain

 

Small, entrepreneurial businesses make up 99% of UK businesses and employ 58.9% (Source: Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform) of the working population. Britain has a long history of enterprise, innovation and global trade – key areas of focus to move the UK economy out of recession.

 

For 31% of British small businesses, revenues are delivered entirely through online trading – e-commerce is integral to their operations

Finance for start-ups is scarce, 79% of today’s entrepreneurs have not secured any external funding and of those who have, only just over half received it from a bank. In this environment cost-effective innovation and new routes to market that e-commerce provides become the logical step to business success.

 

To discover more about how current business managers view this challenge and how they intend to meet it, we worked with YouGov Small Business Panel to survey senior managers and owner managers at 835 businesses from key sectors of the UK economy. Our sample represents the landscape of small business in Britain today. We focused on how they use or intend to use online trading to grow and develop their business as we perceive this to be the single biggest driver to entrepreneurship in the next few years.

 

    Our in-depth research showed that:

     

  • E-commerce success - For 31% of British small businesses, revenues are delivered entirely through online trading - e-commerce is integral to their operations
  • Growing reliance on online revenues - 27% see e-commerce as the future for their business but have not yet made it central to their commercial activity
  • Flexible business model - Finally, 44% acknowledge its importance and will continue to trade off and online

 

Clearly there is a core group of businesses that have grabbed the opportunity to trade online and are reaping the benefits. However, there is still a significant number that have yet to realise the commercial rewards of e-commerce. Interestingly, this is across all the sectors we surveyed with obvious online traders like retail businesses and service providers looking to develop online revenues as much as construction and financial services firms.

 

To read this chapter in its entirety, go to the full report.

 

Chapter 2 summary >>