Stakeholder Position: FSB

Tuesday 11th October 2005 at 12:12 AM

Federation of Small Businesses

More than four out of five small businesses use the Internet and this use is mainly for email purposes. We believe that form-filling etc should be easier with the advent of e-government.

The FSB has more serious concerns with regards to e-procurement:

49.2% of SMEs who responded to the FSB’s 2004 Barriers to Growth Survey, had a website. But only 12.4% use their website for online sales and only 5.5% have a facility for customers to make payments by credit card online.

The Gershon reportrecommended moving local authority procurement online by the end of 2005. This could have a serious impact on SMEs, who trade with government already but do not have online facilities, or who wish to trade with government, but again, do not have the appropriate online facilities.

SMEs who currently trade with government without online facilities will almost certainly lose work. This is a serious and undesirable outcome of the drive towards e-procurement.

The take-up of e-commerce amongst FSB members has been low (we have some follow-up questions in our 2006 survey, which is currently being completed by members. It will be published in Spring 2006). The barriers to online trading cited by FSB members are (amongst others):

E-commerce will not benefit their business (23.5%)
High cost of developing a website (22.3%)
High cost of maintaining a website (18.9%)
Lack of technical skills amongst their employees (15.8%)