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Introduction
The Sensis® Business Index – Small and Medium Enterprises is an ongoing series of surveys designed to track confidence and behaviour in the small business sector.
The primary objectives of the Index are to track small and medium business activity over the past three months; expectations over both the next three and 12 months; and to measure overall confidence within the small business community. A second purpose is to provide an independent, objective channel for reporting proprietors' experience and attitudes on key issues. The Sensis® Business Index is based on a sample size of 1,800 SMEs from metropolitan and regional areas of Australia .
The Sensis® Business Index enables broad scrutiny of the SME market, as well as an understanding of trends and issues relevant to this sector. It examines the differences in attitude and experience between regional and metropolitan SMEs, and between small and medium enterprises. The aim of the Sensis® Business Index is to reflect the attitudes and behaviour of approximately 99 per cent of the Australian SME business sector.
As part of the May 2005 Sensis® Business Index, questions were asked covering the production of information and communication technology (ICT) goods or services in SMEs. SMEs were asked whether they produced ICT goods or services, either for sale or for their own internal use, what ICT goods or services they produced, the value of ICT produced, the extent and value of ICT exports by SMEs, the production of software by SMEs and the extent of ICT specific employment.
For the purposes of this analysis, ICT goods and services included (but were not necessarily limited to) hardware, components, software, advice or consultancy on computers or software, database development, repair of high technology equipment and web design.
This report builds on similar research that was conducted in May 2004 to see the extent to which there had been change, and to investigate some new areas. Where relevant comparisons are made to the results from May 2004.
Another aspect of this research was to again test the hypothesis that ICT production was happening in industry sectors that were not traditionally considered ICT focused. To test this hypothesis, analysis by ANZSIC classification was performed. Another focus of this research was to see the extent of exports of ICT goods and services by SMEs. To investigate these linkages data was analysed by the export profile of firms. Both ANZSIC classification and export profile of firms are collected as standard components of the Sensis® Business Index.
The investigation of this hypothesis leads to two differing concepts: ICT producing SMEs, which are across any sector, and SMEs in the traditionally defined ICT sector. The sector that was traditionally defined as producing ICT was defined as including ANZSIC codes 2841, 2842, 2849, 2852, 4613, 4614, 4615, 7120, 7831, 7832, 7833 and 7834.
The Sensis ® Business Index is an initiative of Sensis as part of its commitment to this vital business sector. Surveying was conducted by Sweeney Research between 18 April and 13 May 2005.
This report was completed for the Australian Government Department of Communications, Information Technology and the Arts.
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