Interactive marketers never like coming across studies that correlate feeble e-business efforts with their country of origin, so you can imagine how I felt when I received an e-mail from research company “eMarketer”:http://www.emarketer.com titled *”Is Canada Losing Its Edge?”*
In short, “the summary”:http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?1003559 from the company’s “new report”:http://www.emarketer.com/Report.aspx?ebus_canada_sep05 (which includes additional third-party research) suggests that Canadian small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are “falling behind international competitors when it comes to the adoption of e-business solutions.” Given that “Statistics Canada”:http://www.statscan.ca says 99 percent of all Canadian businesses fall into the category of SMBs, this is bad news for the Great White North.
The report’s author goes on to say that, “although some Canadian businesses have stepped up their investment in new technology, there is still an overabundance of caution and not enough action on the part of many Canadian firms.” While he does note that SMBs in general have traditionally been slow to adopt IT and new technology, that’s certainly no consolation.
So what could be holding back businesses based in a country known for its superior Internet penetration? In short, money. Even today, many small businesses believe the Internet to be costly and complex, and hesitate to invest in something they feel they can’t control. But consider the proliferation of self-made sites and blogs! These days, it doesn’t take an in-depth knowledge of Internet technology or a lot of loonies to publish your own site and “promote it”:https://adwords.google.com online.
This may be a rather oversimplified solution, but really, for the sake of Canadian business more should — and must — be done. I for one would like to see next year’s report titled, “Canadian Companies Kick Some E-Business Butt.”