Business Reloaded

So what are SMEs?

An SME is a ‘Small to Medium Enterprise’. More specifically, small enterprises are those that employ less than 50 people and medium enterprises are those that employ between 50 and 250.

So, compared with all the big corporations – from BA to Vodafone – they are just insignificant tiddlers?

Well, no. To quote the from the Sept. 2010 Inter Departmental Business Register report:

“The distribution of enterprises by employment size band shows that 88.6 per cent had an employment of less than 10, and 98.0 per cent had less than 50 employment. Large enterprises, those with 250 or greater employment, accounted for only 0.4 per cent.”

98% of all the businesses in the UK employ less than 50 people. I’d say that the SME world is very important and very underrated.