A research that was jointly undertaken by RSM Singapore, Singapore Institute of Technology (“SIT”) and the Institute of Singapore Chartered Accountants (“ISCA”) found that 69 per cent of small and medium-sized enterprises (“SMEs”) have yet to adopt data analytics, despite the availability of various support schemes from the Singapore government to help SMEs digitalise their business.

 

A total of 575 SMEs, which include those in commercial and professional services, engineering services, and food and beverage services, took part in a survey conducted between November 2018 and April 2020.

 

The objective was to understand the adoption of data analytics amongst Singapore SMEs by examining their readiness and technological capability to adopt data analytics, the extent of analytics tasks embraced, the perceived “usefulness” of data analytics, and their reasons for adopting or rejecting data analytics.

 

This research also shed light on the fact that, in terms of data analytics capability, the majority of the SMEs did not have designated full-time staff to perform data analysis, and more than 50 per cent of the respondents reported that outsourcing this function to meet their data analytics needs was the preferred option.

 

Adrian Tan, partner and leader of data science at RSM Singapore and co-author of this study said, “Outsourcing of the data analytics function appears to be a popular choice for SMEs. In fact, since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, we have seen an increasing number of clients approaching us to help them automate their business processes, extract insights from data or deploy and embed analytics and other technological solutions in their operations.”

 

Read the full report on Data Analytics Adoption in Singapore SMEs here: 

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