SME Monitor 2018 on digitalisation and Work 4.0

The SME Monitor 2018 is entirely in the context of digitalisation and Work 4.0 developments. Once again this year, managers of Swiss SMEs or people with management functions took part in the online survey conducted by the trade magazine ORGANISATOR.

The survey asked about the economic outlook for the next twelve months, for example. In this regard, 43 percent of respondents are positive about the future, 48 percent assume that the current economic situation will not change, and 9 percent assess the outlook as rather negative. Compared to the previous year, optimism has declined somewhat, as in 2017 58 percent of the SMEs surveyed still assessed the economic outlook as positive. It therefore appears that realism is spreading among companies. Nevertheless, the basis for 2018 is probably much better than last year, according to an overall conclusion of the current SME Monitor.

(Source: ORGANISATOR)

(Still) little interest in agile methods

In addition to questions relating to economic prospects, challenges and investment behaviour, this year's survey also asked how changes in the world of work are reflected in work organisation. A differentiated picture emerges here: In addition to the digitalization of work processes, which is primarily noticeable in operational terms, a greater need for flexible working hours and more demanding employee management are at the top of the responses.

At the bottom of the list are collaboration with freelancers and the introduction of new working methodologies such as Scrum, Lean Management or similar. Since it was mainly small companies that took part in the survey, this finding is hardly surprising - however, for small companies in particular, working with freelancers would be an opportunity to better focus on core processes.

(Source: ORGANISATOR)

How digitally positioned do you consider your company to be?

Information on the sample

The companies surveyed for this year's 2018 SME Monitor were 76.8 percent from the services and trade sector, 16 percent from industry and manufacturing, and the remainder from the commercial sector. The majority (64.3 percent) of companies surveyed have fewer than 50 employees, 7.1 percent are in the 50-100 employee range, 16 percent are in the 100-250 employee range, and 12.5 percent have more than 250 employees. The turnover of 50 percent of the respondents is less than CHF 5 million. Overall, the sample is not representative, but to a large extent it corresponds to the reality that over 90 percent of all Swiss companies are SMEs with fewer than 20 employees.

The ORGANISATOR special publication "KMU-Monitor 2018" with further information, comments and interviews is available at download here available.