Small and medium-sized enterprises aren’t getting the attention they deserve from the U.S. telecom industry, which could be missing out on $16 billion in annual revenues from this market. That’s according to research from consultancy Inzenka.
Carriers are not offering their SME customers up-to-date VoIP and cloud services. If they did, the businesses’ customers could become more efficient and help boost carrier revenues, Inzenka’s research says, as broken down by Telecoms.com.
The findings were compiled after Inzenka conducted a survey of 700 small and medium enterprises in the U.S. It found that only a little more than a quarter (27 percent) are using VoIP, while half of those who aren’t using it want to be, within two years. One-third of survey respondents were interested in learning more about cloud services from providers who sell them VoIP.
Inzenka says the survey results show that service providers in the U.S. are good at selling to big corporate clients, but thus far haven’t been able to tailor their offerings successfully to SMEs, which usually can’t compete with large organizations in terms of IT-savvy. Taking advantage of the opportunity, Inzenka co-founder Andy Katz says, could even help the struggling economy.
"… depriving SMBs of the advantages brought by new technology will inevitably weaken the U.S. post-recession recovery, as well as impacting on the top and bottom line of U.S. telecoms companies," Katz said.
