It has become very popular to slag off politicians these days for all the trouble they have caused. We all know they spent too long being friendly to developers and bankers while ignoring us, the SMEers, who are the cornerstone of the economy. If they invested in us and encouraged the knowledge economy instead of the construction led economy all would be much better, right?

Well let’s look at that – just how prepared are we to work in the knowledge economy? We figure we are the new Scandinavians; a well-educated, well-paid population that is a leading nation of the world. Is this true? If almost 20% of us were not too busy building houses would we have been ready to put on the lab coat and start making some breakthroughs? Would we be ready to start selling some nice complex financial instruments or building cutting edge software?

Just how ready is your business for a more sophisticated society? The main answer normally is: ‘Who cares? I’ve got a small local business and although I like to discuss the politics of the day, my customers are my customers and they are not for changing’.

Well, the world is changing and our customers’ habits are changing. The days of an ad in the golden pages being enough are gone. We now compete with online competitors with low costs, and our customers are getting fussy as money is tighter. The days of ‘technology is too advanced for our customers’ are fast coming to an end according to recent stats from the CSO.

Business stats

•  83% of businesses have broadband, up from 43% in 2005.
•  96% use the internet.
•  85% of businesses now use internet banking.
•  65% have a website.
•  121% mobile penetration – businesses are mobile, with more mobile phones than people in the country.

Consumer stats

• 930,000 Irish people used online banking in 2009 and this number is rising rapidly.
• 1.7 million Irish people use the web to book flights and accommodation.
• 1.2 million had ordered goods or services online for private use.
• 1.5 million people use a computer every single day.
•  62% of all households are connected to the internet.

So, in short, we are moving online and onto our mobile. Let’s balance this with the fact that Ireland is still one of the countries with the lowest adoption of credit card payments amongst SMEs. Our customers are moving online and becoming more digital in their dealings but we are still chasing cheques. The cheque will be gone in 2016 – what will we do then? The implications are big, not just for getting paid but also for financing our business. It was all great fun dodging payment requests with ‘It’s in the post’ but what do you do when that excuse is gone? We are going to have to get paid faster to pay out faster

So back to those pesky politicians … what will they do to help us? They have promoted schemes such as innovation vouchers where businesses can get a grant of €5,000 to develop their businesses online, plus other similar supports in terms of training and guidance. The politicians could definitely do more but frankly it looks like this is where we need to help ourselves and each other as SMEs.

In most cases the solutions are small steps that are cheap enough to implement but we need to go and do it. It’s time to get knowledgeable about doing business in a Knowledge Economy.