What is SMEs?
‘ The category of micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) is made up of enterprises which employ fewer than 250 persons and which have an annual turnover not exceeding 50 million euro, and/or an annual balance sheet total not exceeding 43 million euro.’ (Definition, 2011) Above explained is the new definition reconstructed by European Commission based on the developments to business environment. This was published in the year 2005 in their website further talking about the importance of SME’s to the European community in the report they issued.
Looking further into how and why SMEs plays a major role in the business environment the report explains that, the 25 million SMEs provides 75 million jobs covering 99% enterprises in 25 European union countries. Nonetheless, SMEs has to face difficulties in capital and other important factors such as investment loans especially during the early stage which makes it less stable and short period existence for these types of businesses. (Introduction, 2011) However, some determined minds working through this field tend to survive the obstacles faced in the early stage and carry on with the other phases.
Usually SMEs have less than 250 employees. This small community also has to have an intranet among them to be updated and connected to each another. One of the most common tools is paper based communication. Paper based communication requires plenty of paper, more procedure, and more time, which is less reliable and difficult to manage. It also has its advantage of having long time proof of records. But that is not the basic factor highly prioritized in today’s business world. As alternatives keeps the place tidy and stores the record internally in any hard disk or any software. Most importantly, company records are much safer where there is more IT involved.
Though, communication is a basic factor in every business organization, not every company has established
References: Definition, 2011, [Online] Accessed on February 7, 2011, via http://www.euresearch.ch/fileadmin/documents/PdfDocuments/SME_Definition_en.pdf Introduction, 2011 [Online] Accessed on February 7, 2011, via http://www.euresearch.ch/fileadmin/documents/PdfDocuments/SME_Definition_en.pdf