Price of insufficient access to technology is €13 million for average European mid-sized business

Ricoh Europe, London/Wallisellen, 24 August 2017 – A new study from technology specialist Ricoh Europe reveals the scale of missed revenue from poor technology access for European mid-sized businesses (MSBs).

A total of 90% of business decision makers from companies in the UK, Germany, Italy, France and Spain identify lack of technology access as a cause of missed revenue. The average amount of potentially missed revenue for each company is €13 million.

Overall, European MSBs thought that a mean of 15% of revenue was missed due to insufficient access to technology. Across respondent countries, the percentage missed revenue varied as follows:

Italy	18 %
UK	15 %
Germany	18 %
France	11 %
Spain	13 %

The chief reason for poor access to technology was inefficient deployment and training, with 42% of respondents selecting this as a key issue. Other reasons included tech vendors not offering the right products and services (33%) while a similar proportion thought their IT teams didn’t identify new and interesting products and services (32%).

Clearly the technology itself and the support around its installation and usage were the key issues, with only 12% of MSBs stating that their organisations didn’t have access to technology due to budgetary constraints.

Javier Diez-Aguirre, Vice President, Corporate Marketing, Ricoh Europe said: “Despite the vast range of technology that is available to organisations, it is clear that mid-sized businesses across Europe do not feel like they are getting good value from their choices. Improved efficiencies and better collaboration and communication between staff are crucial constituents of making a successful business. Our research makes clear that the tech industry has a responsibility to help mid-sized businesses realise these benefits in full.”

Europe’s MSBs do have reasons to be cheerful, with 79% achieving or exceeding sales targets at mid-year. Nearly all of the businesses questioned felt that technology had contributed to their success, with improvements in collaboration between staff pulled out as the biggest single reason for success (59%) followed by helping to save money (53%).

For those businesses that had not hit their targets, the single biggest reason for this was the macro-economic environment (33%).

For more information visit www.ricoh-europe.com.