The Business Bulletin
SME Survey What is your biggest operational challenge?
Business processes 24.1%
Business processes 25.9%
Other 42.6% Other 49.9% Sales systems 9.3%
COVID-19 13%
COVID-19 9.3%
"Red tape" Sales systems 11.1% 7.4%
"Red tape" 7.4%
Biggest Operational Challenge
In most small businesses there are always hurdles to overcome and fires to put out and often these are
■ Outsourcing services ■ People - employees
operation issues. In this latest survey
■ People - recruitment
(54 respondents), the question was
■ Sales systems
asked to identify that challenge and also to see if there was any
Operational Issues Tackled First
There was an ‘other’ option to
correlation with what challenge
capture anything that had been
would be tackled first.
glaringly missed!
The top-level options given were: ■ Business processes ■ CRM systems
The results can be seen in the graphs below. The top 3 challenges
processes (24.1%), sales systems
■ Dealing with COVID-19
‘red tape’ (7.4%).
legislation, HMRC, etc ■ IT systems (hardware, software) ■ Measuring key performance indicators
46 | Issue 3 – Operations and Resources
priority over other potential issues. Strangely, but reassuringly, no respondent tagged finance systems as an issue. Hopefully this suggests that small businesses are on top of their finances and utilising the cloudbased accountancy systems that are out there; helping them to easily manage their business.
completed the survey were business
■ Cyber security
■ Government ‘red tape’ e.g.
that the pandemic is having to take
facing those small businesses that
and dealing with COVID-19 equal
■ Finance systems
tape’ was still 7.4%. This suggests
second (9.3%), then government Interestingly there was pretty
Get involved To take part in the next survey – Do you have a coach/mentor/adviser
much a match on what operation
for your business? –
issues were going to be tackled first
visit here: https://forms.
with 25.9% focusing on business issues, but this time COVID-19 gained more influence (13%) followed by sales systems (11.1%); ‘red
gle/6VVXvSpqrUrm9tLN8. The results will be shared in the next edition of this magazine.
