One of the subjects that’ll be under the microscope at the upcoming Connected Britain event is the enterprise market. The surprise is that while they’re apparently keen to talk about it, telcos continue to ignore a big opportunity.
Looking at the conference agenda for the upcoming Connected Britain event (11-12 September in London), two sessions quickly stood out to us: Services for the Modern Enterprise, and Connectivity for Industry. The former is particularly interesting and promises to cover the current landscape surrounding services for enterprises of all sizes, how are the needs of enterprise customers are changing, and more.
The key phrase there (at least the one that got our attention) is “enterprises of all sizes” because the rich opportunity that at least half the enterprise market holds for telcos has long been and continues to be mostly ignored. That’s because while telcos may obsessively pursue business from big company accounts, those firms make up only a fraction of the total enterprise market segment. The reality is that enterprises, for the most part, are NOT big companies. On the contrary, the enterprise market is largely populated by micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs), those businesses with 1-9, 10-50, or fewer than 100 employees.
The numbers bear that assertion out. Research firm Statista finds, using the UK as an example, that only around a third of the workforce is employed by large companies (those with 200+ staff)[1]. 66% of it sits within the MSME domain and from the perspective of access to enterprise telco services, MSMEs are horribly underserved. It appears telcos don’t care about them.
For various reasons (trust, financial, and other issues all come into it) many if not most MSMEs are reluctant to sign up for enterprise telecoms accounts and since that’s the only way they’d to able to access common business services, most end up meeting their firm’s communications needs using their entirely unsuitable personal accounts, which give them little or no access to much needed enterprise functionality. Does your personal mobile account offer call forwarding, call waiting, or business/private line functionality, for instance? I thought not.
This status quo makes no more sense for operators that in does for small businesses. It means that most operators have a large repository of what are, in fact, business customers hidden in their consumer databases that need more advanced services but can’t access them. And, as we said earlier, there are a lot of such customers and not just in the UK. In the US, there are 32.5 million small businesses. In fact, 99.5% of companies there have fewer than 250 employees[2]. Globally, 90% of businesses accounting for 50% of all jobs are small. In the US again, 89% of those companies have fewer than 20 employees, accounting for 46.8% of all American jobs[3].
If they aren’t already doing so, the question operators might consider asking themselves at Connected Britain is “what can we do about that? How can we better meet the needs of a captive audience and turn a missed opportunity into market share for ourselves in the process?”
[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/676671/employees-by-business-size-uk/
[2] https://www.luisazhou.com/blog/small-business-statistics/
[3] https://www.luisazhou.com/blog/small-business-statistics/#:~:text=Globally%2C%2090%25%20of%20businesses%20are,of%20jobs%20in%20the%20US.
E-Contact Services are the leader in Telco Lead Generation. To find out more about how we work and what we can do for you get in touch.
Connected Britain: what about the enterprise market?
One of the subjects that’ll be under the microscope at the upcoming Connected Britain event is the enterprise market. The surprise is that while they’re apparently keen to talk about it, telcos continue to ignore a big opportunity.
Looking at the conference agenda for the upcoming Connected Britain event (11-12 September in London), two sessions quickly stood out to us: Services for the Modern Enterprise, and Connectivity for Industry. The former is particularly interesting and promises to cover the current landscape surrounding services for enterprises of all sizes, how are the needs of enterprise customers are changing, and more.
The key phrase there (at least the one that got our attention) is “enterprises of all sizes” because the rich opportunity that at least half the enterprise market holds for telcos has long been and continues to be mostly ignored. That’s because while telcos may obsessively pursue business from big company accounts, those firms make up only a fraction of the total enterprise market segment. The reality is that enterprises, for the most part, are NOT big companies. On the contrary, the enterprise market is largely populated by micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs), those businesses with 1-9, 10-50, or fewer than 100 employees.
The numbers bear that assertion out. Research firm Statista finds, using the UK as an example, that only around a third of the workforce is employed by large companies (those with 200+ staff)[1]. 66% of it sits within the MSME domain and from the perspective of access to enterprise telco services, MSMEs are horribly underserved. It appears telcos don’t care about them.
For various reasons (trust, financial, and other issues all come into it) many if not most MSMEs are reluctant to sign up for enterprise telecoms accounts and since that’s the only way they’d to able to access common business services, most end up meeting their firm’s communications needs using their entirely unsuitable personal accounts, which give them little or no access to much needed enterprise functionality. Does your personal mobile account offer call forwarding, call waiting, or business/private line functionality, for instance? I thought not.
This status quo makes no more sense for operators that in does for small businesses. It means that most operators have a large repository of what are, in fact, business customers hidden in their consumer databases that need more advanced services but can’t access them. And, as we said earlier, there are a lot of such customers and not just in the UK. In the US, there are 32.5 million small businesses. In fact, 99.5% of companies there have fewer than 250 employees[2]. Globally, 90% of businesses accounting for 50% of all jobs are small. In the US again, 89% of those companies have fewer than 20 employees, accounting for 46.8% of all American jobs[3].
If they aren’t already doing so, the question operators might consider asking themselves at Connected Britain is “what can we do about that? How can we better meet the needs of a captive audience and turn a missed opportunity into market share for ourselves in the process?”
[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/676671/employees-by-business-size-uk/
[2] https://www.luisazhou.com/blog/small-business-statistics/
[3] https://www.luisazhou.com/blog/small-business-statistics/#:~:text=Globally%2C%2090%25%20of%20businesses%20are,of%20jobs%20in%20the%20US.
E-Contact Services are the leader in Telco Lead Generation. To find out more about how we work and what we can do for you get in touch.
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