Originally written by Anna Jordan on Small Business
The top priority for family businesses is to improve their digital capabilities, with 60 per cent ranking it in first place.
The UK Family Business Outlook study, conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers, surveyed 2,081 key decision makers at family businesses.
Over half (53 per cent) want to introduce new products and services and 47 per cent want to increase their use of new technologies.
Research shows that only 14 per cent of UK family businesses have a ‘fixed’ strategy where a strong capability is already in place. ‘Digital capabilities’ is the term used to describe the skills and attitudes needed by individuals and organisations for today’s digital business world.
>See also: How autonomous technology can boost business productivity
“In 2020, the winners were those who already had an online presence,” says Suzi Woolfson, a private business partner at PwC. “As consumers, we’re never going back to ‘store only’. So, digitisation is happening from the front office to the back office. During Covid-19, we’ve seen stop gaps created but there’s a long way to go to digitise all of these processes.”
A lot of energy has been spent on survival during Covid-19 – finding a way through and planning for the future. Now businesses can