Small businesses losing 15% of week on IT issues
Research conducted on behalf of BT Ireland has revealed that small and medium sized businesses in Ireland are losing up to 15% of the working week due to IT issues.
The research, conducted by iReach on behalf of BT, focused on the role played by ordinary employees or ‘IT nice guys’ in offices with no dedicated or formalised IT personnel or support services.
The survey indicates that while 76% of decision makers acknowledge the importance of IT for the efficiency of their organisation and 56% say that it is important for the competitiveness of their business, 44% view the cost associated with employing a dedicated IT professional as being too prohibitive.
As a result in many organisations the role becomes the unofficial responsibility of a member of staff who has had no formal training and in some cases is likely to spend up to 25% of their working week looking after IT issues.
These ‘office IT nice guys’ are usually part of the management team (38%) or administration team (32%).
To coincide with the publication of the research BT Ireland has launched www.dabs4work.ie, an IT and Technology retail website aimed at small and medium businesses.
The website will carry over 15,000 products from a variety of different manufacturers including HP, Sony, Samsung and Toshiba.
The launch of the Dabs brand in Ireland is intended to boost BT’s online sales and service offering to Irish businesses.
