SCOTLAND'S business community is on a par with the world's most technologically advanced countries, but there are continued concerns that small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) north of the Border have been slower to embrace the information age.
A survey commissioned by Scottish Enterprise found that business uptake of products such as the Internet, video conferencing and e-mail was particularly high in this country. However, the SMEs - which account for about 70% of all companies based in Scotland - seem to be slower in coming around.
A smaller but potentially significant concern is that of Web sites, with most Scottish firms failing to turn their company's Internet page into a new source of revenue.
Most use it as an advertising or marketing tool, with only 12% of Scottish firms making on-line sales, less than half the proportion of US companies using their site for commercial transactions.
''E-commerce is one of the things we will be trying to raise awareness of, although it is not a huge concern,'' Ray Macfarlane of Scottish Enterprise Operations said. ''We are not demonstrably behind most of the world.
''We are behind America, but that is where the Web was invented, so it's not necessarily a condemnation to be behind the US.''
Macfarlane said Scottish Enterprise's Span network would also target SMEs, which appear to be lagging behind their larger counterparts in taking up new technology. Span, which stands for Scottish Partnerships Across Networks, is an initiative designed to help businesses discover how information and communication technologies (ICT) can improve their performance.
In each of the survey's benchmarked countries - which include Germany, France, Japan, the US and the UK - SMEs accounted for up to 60% of all companies interviewed. Although this ratio rose to 62.5% in Scotland, it still fell short of a representative sample of businesses north of the Border.
''We have far more small businesses than large ones,'' Macfarlane said. ''If you looked at only the small businesses, I think you would find that they are generally less aware (of ICT) than large organisations.''
About 35% of the 200 firms surveyed were reportedly ''enthusiastic'' about the development of the so-called information society, a higher rate than was recorded in any of the benchmarked countries. Only 5% said that they were ''indifferent'' or ''antagonistic'' towards technological advances.
It was also discovered that Scottish firms make more use of video conferencing than those in any of the other countries surveyed.
Slightly more than three-quarters of companies north of the Border which operate out of more than one site have networked their computers. Although this is somewhat lower than the 79% reported in Japan, it puts Scotland far ahead of the US, where only 61% of businesses are networked.
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