The CBS recently published a report saying that about a third of Dutch companies have not or barely digitised the processes in their day-to-day operations. In a way, this makes sense of course. You could assume that smaller companies have less money to spend, and are thus not spending that money on software or other digitisation efforts. But I have another view on the matter. I think that smaller companies think they are too small for digitisation. Too, being the operative word here.

The report shows a strong correlation between the size of the company and the level of digitisation. In this specific report, the companies were asked, themselves, to indicate to which level they'd achieved digitisation. In the larger segment, 500 or more employees, a whopping 65% of the companies say to have achieved a high level of digitisation. By contrast, among the smalles companies, 2 employees or less, only 24% say to have achieved the same level.

The report goes on to dive more deeply into what types of processes are digitised and there's a clear trend in external processes being more digital. For example, sending invoices and managing customer data. These processes all have to do with external parties. What about internal processes?

This struck me in a recent conversation with a friend. He works in construction, for a contractor company. I'm not sure how many staff they have, but he described it 'small'. When I explained more about Capptions and how it can also be used in construction, as an example, he said it was interesting but they're too small for that type of thing.

I didn't think much of it at the time, but then my boss shared the CBS report and I made the connection. Is it possible that smaller companies have this preconceived notion about software, and EHS software specifically in this case, that it is only meant for 'large' companies?

Or, is it simply that digitisation is something that is yet to be achieved due to budgetary issues? They might be a bit more old fashioned? Or is there some other reason they're lagging behind?