The Powering Small Business Britain Report

 

Download the Powering Small Business Britain Report (PDF, 2.57MB)

 

 

Executive summary

 

Enormous and untapped opportunity for online enterprise in Britain

The European e-commerce market is predicted to grow to £275 billion by 2011 and 70% of the UK population has made a purchase online to date. UK small businesses are responding at varying speeds: 31% are trading online only while 27% acknowledge the importance of online to their business but have not yet made the move.

 

Drivers of success for online business include

Greater customer reach, access to global markets and considerable cost benefits, aiding the bottom line and, in many cases, bring new businesses to profitability more quickly. The small businesses we surveyed were confident that online trading was delivering substantial benefits across their business, both streamlining operations and increasing customer acquisition.

 

A number of barriers exist to e-commerce adoption

Our survey did identify some issues that are felt by both businesses and consumers when trading online. The risks of fraud were cited by 33% of small businesses in the UK, with a surprising 57% worrying that customers would not be able to find them online.

 

Changes required to entrepreneurial thinking

Open innovation with both risk sharing partners and increasing co-creation (the testing and development of new products) with consumers will lead entrepreneurial thinking. Tomorrow’s entrepreneur will not act alone to take the online opportunity. They will be surrounded by partners providing specialist core services and engaging consumers from the outset to assist in new product development.

 

In the future, enterprise will change

Over the next five years, 40% of small business owners see e-commerce as growing in importance and acknowledge the shift towards operating in a different kind of business environment. Looking forward, 35% of our respondents saw the majority of their revenues coming from online and 58% acknowledged that their greatest growth in revenues would come through online sales.