Dean Elissat admits it’s tempting for small businesses to latch on to the next “bright shiny new object” when competing in the digital world.
Tablets, social media and even wearable technology are all competing for consumers’ attention. There was a time when it used to be just TV or radio.
“Most organizations aren’t keeping pace, if you will, with how quickly consumers are asking [for different ways] they want to do business with you,” said the vice-president of client engagement at Vancouver’s Engine Digital ad agency.
This struggle is what Elissat calls “digital maturity” – an organization’s ability to connect with customers through digital means and to respond quickly to technological change.
For example, a company wants to offer customers the option of shopping online. The business may have the means to do so over a desktop, but suddenly most of its customers want that experience over mobile devices.
This is an issue that small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Canada have had a particularly difficult time dealing with, according to an October 7 report from the Internet Association (IA) – an online advocacy group representing giants like eBay (Nasdaq:EBAY), Amazon (Nasdaq:AMZN) and Google (Nasdaq:GOOG).
“Generally speaking, Canadian businesses have been slow to adopt Internet technologies that are mainstream among key competitors globally,” the report said, adding that only 41.1% of Canadian SMEs have a website, despite the fact Canadians are among the world’s heaviest Internet users.
A 2013 report from the Canadian Internet Registration Authority found the average Canadian spends 45 hours a month online.
Meanwhile, the IA report stated just 3% of Canada’s retail economy is online compared with 7% in the U.S. and 23% in the U.K.
“Given the significant discrepancy between consumption and adoption on Internet technologies, it is not surprising that virtually every major comparative study done in the past few years shows Canada to be firmly in the middle of the pack with respect to the digital economy’s contribution to GDP [gross domestic product],” the IA report said.
With just 10.1% of Canadian SMEs selling online compared with 30.5% of large firms, the association recommended Ottawa introduce a “digital renovation” tax credit to motivate SMEs to get their businesses online.
The proposed tax credit would allow SMEs to make claims on purchasing online ads, acquiring a website, optimizing their digital presence for mobile platforms and implementing e-commerce options.
Even if Ottawa never implemented such a tax credit, SMEs are still better positioned to close the digital maturity gap than big corporations, Elissat said.
“The larger organizations tend to have deeper pockets and more resources to push toward becoming more digitally mature,” he said.
“The challenge with a large organization is that it’s always somewhat encumbered by a culture of change being relatively slow.”
Elissat added it’s easier for SMEs to use their [fewer] resources to bring about cultural change, as long as everyone is on board.
“Digital isn’t a department, it’s really a core belief in which the business needs to wrap itself around,” he said.
“Things are being reinvented so much more quickly, and it’s either you’re constantly going to be in a chase to keep up or you’re going to take the lead.”
