Recently Swan Hill made it into The Australian for being the most entrepreneurial town in Australia. It has 117 registered businesses per 1,000 residents, which was well above the Australian average of 92 per 1,000. So well done to the Swan Hill region. However simply being entrepreneurial isn’t enough these days, you also need a good digital engagement strategy, combined with a solid IT environment, which you get by either working with advisors with experience across both IT and business or companies that have partnered to cover both. Deloitte published a report entitled “Small businesses digital trends: accelerating digital engagement” in early August that highlights the importance of digital uptake in small businesses. A large part of what I spend my days doing is working with local businesses to identify and implement ways to improve their digital engagement. This comes backed by 24 years of IT industry experience, doing the very same work for some of Australia’s largest corporations (and even a stint with the state government). We work with businesses on the bigger picture, which includes Digital Enablement items as one element. As all that Digital Enablement work is for nothing if you’re using an outdated smartphone, or your PC is extremely slow, or you internet is slow/intermittent, or the cloud solutions you use hinder, rather than enhance your productivity. Key findings in the Deloitte report were - For the first time, over half of small businesses (55%) have achieved ‘high’ or ‘advanced’ levels of digital engagement in 2019, up from 39% estimated in similar research in 2017 Small businesses moving from basic to advanced digital engagement see a 60% increase in revenue per employee and on average earned 28% higher revenue growth in the last 12 months The most commonly cited barrier to small business digital engagement is cost 51% of businesses with basic levels of digital engagement don’t understand the potential benefits of digital engagement More businesses are using social media for their online presence before establishing a business website. Other items noted were - “Different businesses will engage with digital in different ways, but to do so only a basic or intermediate level, risks lost opportunity, stagnation and even failure in the face of competition.” “One measure of this is revenue per employee, and advanced digital uptake results in a 60% increase on this front, and relative to businesses with basic levels of digital engagement, those with advanced levels on average earned 28% higher revenue growth in the last 12 months.” “It’s concerning that over half of businesses with basic levels of digital engagement don’t fully understand the benefits of digital engagement.” Deloitte produced similar information for the NBN in 2016/2017. The rankings for level of digital engagement are as follows -