A third of IT managers in small companies have no formal training, according to research conducted by Loudhouse on behalf of database company FileMaker.
The study also revealed that 40% of managers in small firms have other responsibilities in addition to IT; a figure which rises to 50% in companies with fewer than 20 employees.
The most job role to be paired with IT responsibilities was director (41%), operations (36%), marketing (18%), finance (15%), sales (13%) and HR (13%). This suggests that in many cases it is the owner/manager himself who takes on the role of IT manager.
One of the most challenging issues for IT managers was managing the storage and cost of emails, the research suggested. This problem is made worse by the fact that 60% of employees use their email system as an ad hoc database, rather than saving contacts and attachments and storing them on a dedicated database.
Employees in small companies were also far more likely to have access to the software and network resources needed to create simple databases, with 71% of staff having such privileges in small firms compared to just 22% in larger organisations.
The functions most likely to go ’off-piste‘ and create their own databases were sales (61%), finance (51%), marketing (42%), operations (33%) and HR (31%). Not surprisingly, IT came last with just 25%.
“The role of IT manager in SMEs is undergoing a sea change: a typical IT manager is seen to be juggling multiple roles and learning ’on-the-job‘ rather than undergoing professional training,” the report concluded.
“Simultaneously, employees, particularly in small businesses, are encouraged to create their own databases and are given the tools to achieve this. With IT skills and resources more dispersed through the business, the result is that employees have created a wilderness of data files outside existing processes.”