European companies, including those in Romania, waste technology investments worth over EUR 9 billion annually by failing to use business software at full capacity, according to a study conducted at the request of Sage, a business management software provider.

The study revealed that, on average, each of the 222,628 medium-sized companies in Europe waste over EUR 43,000 annually. Thus, together, they waste a total amount of EUR 9.6 billion.

This means that over 80 percent of all companies that have invested in the implementation of business management software fail to use it at the full capacity.

The reasons for this situation vary from country to country. For example, 35 percent of the companies in Germany say that business software double other types of existing software, while just over a quarter of the respondents in the UK justify this situation through the lack of customer demand.

A total of 40 percent of Romanian respondents said business management software have too many features in relation to their needs, while 40 percent complain about the lack of training in how to use those programs.

“The study should be seen as a great warning signal for all European companies that spend billions of euros on business management software and this is not being used at its full capacity,” said Christophe Letellier, CEO, Sage Mid-Market.

The study also showed that Social Media is a segment that is more and more attracting the companies’ attention, 64 percent of them saying they would like such a component to be included in the business management software. Also, 76 percent of companies intend to invest in cloud-based business software in the future.

In Romania, 72 percent of medium-sized companies consider the Social Media segment to be an important element of the business management software, and 66 percent plan to invest in cloud-based business software.

The study was carried out in April 2014 by Redshift Research Crowdology at the request of Sage. It was conducted on 600 IT managers from companies with 250-1,000 employees in UK, France, Germany, Portugal, Spain, Belgium, Romania and the Netherlands.

The figures in the study are based on European Union’s estimates that mention the existence of 222,628 medium-sized companies in the EU in 2012.

Irina Popescu, irina.popescu@romania-insider.com