Small Business Week

As part of a wider analysis of the 2009 Business Pulse, we have analysed the different experiences and opinions of a range of businesses by the number of employees. The business sizes surveyed are:

• 1

• 2-5

• 6-25

• 26-50

• 51-100

• 101-200

• 201-250

Larger businesses who responded say that they have suffered least in terms of the impact of the recession, with many reporting increased turnover. They are also the most optimistic about a faster upturn and believe that they are best equipped to get through and succeed through the current downturn and beyond.

Larger SMEs are the most likely to have changed the way they operate in the current recession. Their strongest focus has been cost management. More smaller businesses have innovated their offer to customers; this may be due to flexibility borne out of size. Significantly more smaller business than larger have reported losing customers altogether; 54 per cent of all businesses up to five employees as opposed to only 30 per cent of all companies between 101 and 250 employees have reported this.

Larger businesses consider advice to be more important and the use of formal business advisers, such chambers of commerce, increases with the size of business. Smaller businesses are less likely to take the advice of their own employees but will respect that of peers such as other business owners. 63 per cent of the largest businesses say they have suffered from bad advice, for example, losing customers, staff confidence and money; yet they are still the keenest advocates of seeking business advice.

In terms of technology, larger firms have a more proactive attitude towards technology for business advancement - 57 per cent of businesses comprising 201 to 500 employees say this as opposed to only 37 per cent of businesses with two to five employees. And the larger the SME, the more benefit they are seeing from investment in technology across a range of factors, particularly merging all communications (voicemail, email, text, etc) into a single system. Larger firms also expect that faster broadband speeds will make a positive difference to their business. However, smaller businesses tend to be getting the most advantage from social networking.

With regard to finance, 59 per cent of sole traders and 41 per cent of businesses with between two and five employees say they simply don't have access to finance. Larger firms are more likely to say they can get it but it's just not enough. A significant number of the lager firms say they have raised finance from internal or private sources, 36 per cent of companies with 201 - 250 employees, and are much less reliant on banks than smaller companies.

In terms of the environment, 32 per cent of companies with 201 - 500 employees say that that the downturn has made them more environmentally aware as a company. All companies of less than 25 employees were lower than the 20 per cent mark on this question. 47 per cent of SMEs agree that climate change and the UK economy are linked but more of the larger SMEs agreed that it is important to take action now on climate change for the sake of the future of their business.