(WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — According to the mid-year report from the IT Effectiveness Index (www.iteffectivenessindex.com) issued Wednesday, more than half of small businesses scored poorly or failed the study’s test of “IT effectiveness.”
The IT Effectiveness Index, a project spearheaded by hosting provider The Planet (www.theplanet.com), and executed in partnership with a selection of nine partner organizations, including the Yankee Group (www.yankeegroup.com) and Kennesaw State University (www.kennesawstate.edu), is designed to measure the “technology effectiveness” of small and medium-sized businesses through a fairly straightforward online survey.
According to the results published this week, almost one quarter of respondents – which included hundreds of small businesses – scored grades of D or F, with another 37 percent scoring a C grade.
The results, says Carl Meadows, senior manager of product marketing at The Planet, were more negative than the company was expecting.
“I think going into this,” he says, “we expected a few more Bs and Cs than the Ds and Fs that we got. That was a little surprising.”
Another surprise, says Meadows, was the consistency across the IT categories surveyed. “The results were actually pretty consistent, with 25 to 30 percent failing – having no plan to implement protection – along the various categories, be it disaster recovery, incident management or service management.”
One of the intended results of the survey, he says, is that a participant would be able to identify the areas that need the most attention within their organization, and could begin to take steps to solve them.
The Planet’s VP of marketing and product management, Steven Kahan, said in the press release announcing the results that more than two thirds of respondents indicated that IT and e-commerce are “foundations that enable their business success,” making the results particularly disturbing. Mediocre or poor grades in the study translated to a lack of protection against cyber threats, an inability to prepare for or respond to events or unacceptable levels of downtime in systems.
Along with the letter grade, the report generated by the ITEI provided participants with a benchmark comparison versus companies comparable to themselves.
“That customer that gets the D, they can see where they stack up against other companies that are of a similar size, as well as where they stack up against other companies that are in similar verticals,” says Meadows, “Hopefully that will provide them with some ammunition that they could then take to whoever they need to go to to get additional funding.”
The press release announcing the survey data points to the economy as one of the possible factors contributing to the lack of preparedness recorded, suggesting that small businesses facing the recession have had to make do with less staff and put IT projects on hold while they cut expenses.
Meadows says one piece of advice small businesses can take away from the study is that there are outsourcing options available to help alleviate some of these pain points, a fact that small businesses seem to have been slow to accept.
“Small businesses don’t have to go it alone,” he says. “And for some reason, small businesses are a little bit slower at adopting outsourced services for IT than larger businesses, which have been down this path for a long time now.”
The benefit for The Planet in spearheading the ITEI is not a matter of direct marketing. Meadows says the company may take some cues on how to better market its services to small businesses from the data, but there is no direct sales pitch.
“There are a couple of benefits to it,” he says. “One of them is that we are able to better understand our customers. That’s some primary research for where we can focus our efforts to help them. Two, I think these types of thought leadership campaigns give us a platform to speak authoritatively on some of these subjects.”
About Liam Eagle
Liam Eagle has worked as a contributor to the Web Host Industry Review since its inception in 2000, and as editor since 2003. He has been editor of the WHIR's print magazine since its launch. His daily involvement in the gathering and reporting of Web hosting news and his regular interaction with Web hosting leaders gives him an uncommonly broad appreciation of the issues and tends facing the business. Through his WHIR blog, Liam spots Web hosting trends and offers opinions on the industry-wide impacts of major developments and the motivation behind big announcements. Follow him on Twitter @liameagle
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