CRN:
Ask any group of solution providers for one word to describe their small-business customers and there’s a good chance their collective response will sound like a brood of chattering chicks: ‘cheap, cheap, cheap.’
After all, solution providers say, every dollar spent on IT equipment is hard-fought and needs to show an almost immediate return.
‘Small-business owners are tighter than a… well, I’m not going to finish that. It was something I learned in the Navy,’ laughed Art Torres, owner of Post Computer Systems, a Wilbraham, Mass.-based solution provider, when talking about the challenges selling into that market. ‘I’ll just say budgets are tight, and IT is less considered in the overall budget.’
But the situation is improving, according to the CMP Channel Quarterly Business Spending Survey. A majority of small businesses surveyed are planning to increase IT expenditures over the next 12 months, and about 60% of those increasing their IT budgets will do so by more than 10 percent. 56% of these SMB IT decision-makers expect to spend more on IT solutions in the next year, while 38% said they expect to spend about the same amount of money. Only 6% said they plan to decrease IT spending for the same period.
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