SAC Research

Information need
In Finland the survey of NBEs found that the biggest information need related to customer information (22%), followed by business diversification (15%), technical business issues (15%) and marketing intelligence (14%). This contrasts slightly to the situation in Scotland where agri-businesses said that their biggest (by-far) information need was policy-related information (83%) followed by technical information (16%).  This highlights the divergent information needs of different business groupings.  What is interesting is that if the policy-related information need is removed from the results there is quite an even spread of identified information need relating to financial management, diversification, legal and market intelligence at around the 20% level (similar to Finland).  The findings from Scotland are a good example of how single issues can dominate the precise needs of business through time. The survey was conducted during the last round of Common Agricultural Policy reforms when the Single Farm Payment was being introduced and there was a great deal of uncertainty concerning the business and market impacts of the policy.  This highlights the needs for providers of information and advice to monitor industry to establish current (and future) information needs of rural SMEs.
Use of ICTs
It is clear from Table 1 that Scottish farmers lag behind the NBEs in Finland with regard to business use of computers, connection and use of the internet as well as having their own web-site.  It is well established in Scotland that the agricultural sector of the economy has the lowest level of uptake of computers, the internet, web sites and engagement in e-commerce.  Scottish farmers who have diversified their enterprises are more likely to have a web presence (marketing and selling) as are beef farmers (who can access cattle movement records on-line).
Table 1:  RUBIES SMEs use of computers, internet and web-sites in their business.

	Scotland (NPP farmers)	Finland (NPP NSEs)
Uses computer for running business	77.5%	94.6%
Computer is connected to internet	91.3%	93.7%
Have website for business	16.2%	72.7%

Internet connectivity
The surveys (including members of Icelandic Farm Holidays) also examined how businesses were connected to the internet.  Clearly in all countries there is considerable reliance on modems for connection to the internet by the SMEs with ISDN connection being the second most common method of connection.  There is still only a small amount of broadband penetration (18% of NBEs in Finland have ADSL connections, and only about 5% of farms in Scotland and Iceland).  Information providers must be mindful of the dominance of low bandwidth connections to the internet when using it as a medium for delivering their services to these user-groups.
Table 2:  How the business is connected to the internet
 

	Scotland	Finland	Iceland
Modem	64%	43%	56%
ISDN	16%	25%	49%
ADSL	6%	18%	5%
Broadband >2Mb	9%	9%	2%
Don’t know	5%	5%	4%

Information and advice pathways
The Scottish and Finish surveys examined the perceived importance and frequency of use of various different methods of communication for accessing external business information. Table 3 shows the proportion of respondents who said they were very important or essential to them as a means of accessing external business information.  This clearly shows that in Finland the internet and e-mail were considered as the most important followed by informal face-to-face discussions and phone (mobile and fixed-line).  This contrasts with the findings from in Scotland where trade press radio and face-to-face (both formal consultancy and informal discussions) are the most important means of accessing information followed by the more familiar ICT media (which are still important for more than half the Scottish respondents).  It is clear from further discussion and other anecdotal evidence that the importance of the radio is to access weather forecasts (which are an essential part of the daily farming routine).  It is also evident that the relative importance afforded to trade press, consultants and other informal discussions relates to the timing of the survey coinciding with the introduction of CAP reforms.  The lack of importance afforded to of trade press in Finland is perhaps due to the disparate nature of the NBEs who often have niches for which there is limited topical publications. In Table 3 the figures in figures in parenthesis show the relative importance ranking of each communication channel in each country.
Table 3 “Very important” or “essential” modes of communication by RuBIES SMEs for accessing external business information in Finland and Scotland
 

	Finland (relative ranking)	Scotland (relative ranking)
CD-ROM	14% (18)	9% (18)
E-mail	68% (2)	56% (8)
Fax	23% (17)	36% (11)
Formal face to face discussions in groups (seminars, training)	35% (12)	18% (15)
Informal face to face discussions in groups	34% (13)	33% (12)
Internet	70% (1)	62% (7)
Mobile phone	57% (6)	65% (6)
Newsletters, by e-mail	59% (5)	16% (16)
Newsletters, by post	41% (9)	56% (9)
Newspapers	44% (8)	38% (10)
Personal letter	26% (14)	23% (14)
Phone	59% (4)	76% (5)
Private face to face formal discussions (consultancy)	40% (11)	79% (2)
Private face to face informal discussions	66% (3)	78% (4)
Radio	25%(15)	79% (3)
Text books	49% (7)	14% (17)
Trade Press	40% (10)	88% (1)
TV	25% (16)	33% (13)
Video/DVD	10% (19)	4% (19)

As the surveys used a scaling criteria (1 to 4) to measure the both the frequency of use and importance of use of different types of media it was decided to aggregate these to establish an “efficiency value”. Although not presenting the absolute effectiveness of the media, it highlights the trends about (combined) “use” and “importance” which was compared across the project. The relative “efficiency” of each of the different media to access external information is highlighted in Table 4.
Table 4:  The ten most “efficient” media used to access business information by RuBIES SMEs in Finland and Scotland

Finland	Efficiency Rank	Scotland
Internet	1	Trade Press
E-mail	2	Radio
Phone	3	Mobile phone
Mobile phone	4	Phone
Newspapers	5	E-mail
Private, face to face informal discussions	6	Private, face to face informal discussions
Newsletters, by e-mail	7	Internet
Text books	8	Private, face to face formal discussions (consultancy)
Trade Press	9	Newspapers
Newsletters, by post	10	Newsletters, by post

Clearly the NBEs in Finland are utilising and valuing ICTs as a means of accessing information and advice and also as a means of promoting and conduction business.  In Scotland this is also the case but to a slightly lesser extent where the traditional communication channels of the farming press and radio (for weather forecasts) prevail with limited use of internet as a means of promoting their business and conducting e-business.  This is perhaps due to the nature of the type of business being conducted by farmers in Scotland (direct sale of livestock through auction markets and merchants where point-of-sale contact and observation of the product is paramount) compared to NBEs in Finland where marketing and sales channels tend to be bespoke to individual companies.  Using this “efficiency value” it is clear that ICT tools using the internet, e-mail and mobile phones can offer potential solutions to the concerns surrou nding rural SME access to information and advice. 

Despite this we must recognise that many SMEs reported that when dealing with specific issues (for example CAP administration or environmental regulations) the importance of face-to-face communication was raised. SMEs often feel that they need strictly tailored solutions for their own situation as the influences of the decision made on the basis of the information/advice can be far-reaching. They stressed the importance of being able to trust the information source as well as the validity of the information. The larger the risk associated with the decision, the more importance face-to-face contact was given.  This finding is important as it reaffirms the role of the advisers in strategic decision making advice at SME level. The results show that SMEs also want to be sure they do not misinterpret the information they may gather, and therefore sometimes prefer face-to-face or phone discussions as more personal, interactive modes of communication.

The information demands for SMEs have increased rapidly during the last decade. Since the entrepreneur is often responsible for all business actions from practical production to the strategic planning, financial management, marketing and compliance with regulation, etc, they have to possess a lot of specific information on numerous subjects to be able to make sound business decisions. It is essential that they seek external information/advice in one form or another, although it seems that they are often not very proactive in seeking strategic information.  Most of the passive information sources (e.g. press, newsletters, television, radio, internet, CD-ROM) often require SMEs to adapt generic information to their own business situation. This kind of information does not give a direct answer to a  problem, often needing processed by SMEs or their adviser/consultant.  Even though many SMEs prefer face-to-face communication with most key information sources (e.g. accountant, solicitor, adviser) the results show that for practical reasons they have sometimes to settle for the second best modes of communication, which in many cases seemed to be email, internet sources or the phone.  For important business decisions personal connection has a significant role to play with additional interpretation and advice often required, something that pure ICT solutions can not fully overcome (Nevgi and Tirri, 2003, and Sallisa and Kalli, 2001 note similar things when studying e-learning methods).

There did not seem to be any significant gaps in information delivery chain from the information provider to the SME directly or via adviser or other intermediary. However, according to this research, it is clear that accessing some internet based information is problematic for many SMEs and advisers.  Often they can find the appropriate website, but fail to find the specific information required and internet searches were often difficult and time consuming, leaving them frustrated.  It is clear that the ‘digital divide’ is still in existence with many farmers still having very low connectivity speeds to the internet and have trouble accessing poorly designed websites (those which have not thought about accessibility issues) and downloading larger files (PDF files were frequently mentioned as being problematic).  However, it is evident that the key information providers have well developed websites and web-developers are increasing cognisant of both the usability of their website and the information provided. Increasingly websites are offering users the ability to change the text size or view the site in text-only and are being designed to be viewable on small screens (including mobile phones) as well as standard monitors.

According to the results, however, both SMEs and advisers, preferred to use a more personal mode of communication (phone, face-to-face, personal e-mail) when they were actively seeking information, although the use of the internet is becoming much more common in the younger generations of SMEs and adviser.  SMEs and advisers want to have clearer sign-posting to (a) specialist contacts to answer specific questions and (b) clear signposting to sources of information.  An irony of the results in Scotland was that a designated internet portal for Scottish farmers was raised by the focus groups, and it was clear that the farmers would like to see such a service developed providing it could be personalised –  the original project concept!

Most SMEs do not have negative attitudes towards ICTs but feel that they need to know more about the possibilities offered by ICTs and develop skills in using them. This is very important since the development of the new technological solutions is rapid and SMEs report that they often can not keep up with change. Before adopting new ICT solutions in their business, SMEs report that they must clearly see the benefits from them as they would for any other tool in their business operations.

The results of the research phase have showed us that despite differences between location (Scotland and Finland), business sector and social structures, attitudes about, and issues encountered when accessing information and advice are very similar.  The uptake and use of the mobile phone and the internet (specifically e-mail) as a communications tool for rural SMEs in the Northern Periphery has developed rapidly in recent years despite some problems remaining over connectivity (internet) and service coverage (mobile phones). In both Scotland and Finland many of the SMEs reported that there is enough external information available, the problem is that often it is not utilised for one reason or another.  “Lack of time”, “too much effort” and “lack of motivation” are frequently given as reasons for not using available external advice and information and it is clear that this is often related to a lack of strategic planning within the SME (if they can not express what the problem is they can not specify their information needs). It is progressive SMEs that are most likely to adopt new technologies and it is they that are clearly the key target group to benefit from improved access to information and advice.  In order to improve the knowledge transfer to rural SMEs the information provided must be readily accessible using a variety of communication pathways and it must also be summarised succinctly with regard to the SME (e.g. it may require writing in a non-scientific style).

Contact

Mr Steven Thomson
SAC (Scottish Agricultural College) Work SAC, King's Buildings, West Mains Road,
Edinburgh
EH9 3JG
TelWork 0131 535 4192
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