Half of SME bosses prefer 'DIY IT', study claims

45 per cent prefer to fix IT themselves, whereas 17 per cent would rather use Google

A recent study from office tech supplier, Altodigital, has stated that SMEs are wasting over three weeks of their own time every year trying to maintain their own IT.

Almost half (45 per cent) would rather try and rectify IT issues themselves than pay for someone to fix them. This is compared to 17 per cent who would much rather use Google to solve problems.

This means those bosses eat up an average of four hours fiddling with broken tech each week, the research said.

A further 16 per cent rely on knowledgeable friends and family members.

Altodigital also reckons that 43 per cent of these maverick IT doctors go it alone due to the high price of outsourced services, 29 per cent are simply over confident about the level of their ability and 11 per cent are too embarrassed about their apparent lack of IT knowledge.

The most common problems appear to be server issues with 37 per cent, slow internet with 24 per cent, dud emails at 22 per cent and broken scanners with 17 per cent.

Tony Burnett, group sales director at Altodigital, said: "From our experience, owner-managers are often tempted to save money by doing absolutely everything themselves when it comes to running their business - including managing IT.

"However, this can often be a false economy and could in fact be costing far more than they realise. Not only could their lack of knowledge cause downtime or IT problems, as the research has shown, but more importantly there is a significant time cost. And that's time they could be spending running their own business."