The financial downturn has all businesses tightening their belts and focussing on getting greater bang for their buck as they look for ways to survive the crisis.

Castelli says SMEs are more likely to adopt managed and hosted services in order to avoid unnecessary up-front capital investments and, he says, 79% of the companies prefer to have a predictable monthly recurring charge per user for telecoms equipment and services.
 
“We expect that the Software as a Service (SaaS) approach will offer good opportunities for services providers and solution vendors,” Castelli says.
 
According to Castelli, overall, SMEs like simplicity when dealing with their providers, with 83% of the SMEs in Australia preferring to purchase all their fixed and mobile telecoms services from a single source.

Bundling multiple services including fixed and mobile represents additional opportunities for providers, according to Castelli, but he says these bundles have to offer commercial benefits when compared to the stand-alone offerings, with most of the SMEs (66%) still believing that price is the most important factor when selecting providers.
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