Hence, the advice from Una Driscoll, founder of Belt Up Kidz, is that SMEs need to do their homework thoroughly.
This relativity means that SMEs are affected to a greater extent by trade barriers and volatility surrounding export related costs.
SME opportunities The fact that SMEs are starting to spot the opportunities offered by emerging Europe is no surprise to Rob Phillips, managing director of battery manufacturer, Accutronics.
Being overawed by the size of the country is one of the challenges that SMEs face, as well as picking the wrong point of entry for sales.
Data today does not prove the opposite – that SMEs are better than multinationals for scale – but it does challenge those initial assumptions.
Research from the professional body for accounting technicians (AAT) found that SMEs were leaking £2.9bn annually because of unqualified staff handling their finances.
He says the intention of such criminals is primarily profit, and that SMEs are often targeted as they are regarded as a softer target than their bigger partners.
This means that SMEs in the UK will have to charge and account for VAT in the member state where the digital services are sold – that is 75 different VAT rates in 28 different countries.
The Federation of Small Businesses has released research showing that SMEs are struggling to protect their intellectual property (IP), with 25% of survey respondents indicating they've suffered violation or wrongdoing in the past five years.
Name: Naked Marketing City: Hingham Website: www.nakedmarketing.co.uk Naked Marketing was born in 2002 due to the shared frustrations of founding directors, Ben Handford and David Lloyd, who felt that SMEs were being priced out of buying marketing services.
With an improving economy, the government has a great opportunity to implement change and offer real incentives for small businesses to thrive, but there are steps that SMEs can take alongside this.
