BT’s digital drive targets SMEs

Published on Sunday 6 January 2002 00:00

BT SCOTLAND is set to launch a new £100,000 e-business marketing campaign tomorrow targeting the small and medium enterprise market for the first time in the UK.

The company is also hoping to pick up disgruntled Atlantic Telecom customers left abandoned after the 500,000 emergency funding for customers ended last week.

The ‘Get Connected, Stay Connected’ pilot scheme is aimed at getting 14,000 small and medium-sized enterprises in Edinburgh and the Lothians area committed to the digital economy.

Brendan Dick, general manager of Strategic Partnerships at BT Scotland, said: “Alarm bells soon start ringing and bills start mounting for SMEs when vital business-critical communications connections go down or IT suppliers withdraw from the market. Indeed, more than seven in 10 companies cannot tolerate a complete systems loss for three days or more without a serious impact on their business.”

BT Scotland will unveil a 6ft-tall Time-and-Money Clock with pound values in place of hours in Parliament Square, Edinburgh, to drive home the benefits of having a Digital Office, which can produce an overall average productivity increase of more than 10%.

Stefano Boni, managing director of Mr Boni’s Ice Cream Ltd and chairman of the Edinburgh branch of the Federation of Small Businesses, also hopes to encourage businesses to take part. “While the federation is playing a key role in helping to make government telecommunications policy e-business friendly, we also welcome any commercial initiatives – including the BT ‘Get Connected’ campaign, which helps small businesses to maximise the full efficiency gains from new technology.”

According to BT, SMEs are typically short of time, concerned about cashflow, often technically illiterate with little IT support, and worried about staying in business.

Jon Furmston, head of SME business marketing at BT, said: “SMEs lag behind in adopting new technology because of fears about the perceived cost and hassles.”