Small & Medium Enterprises Wiki

Welcome to SME
''Although usable, please note that this site is new and is currently being improved. Thanks for your understanding in advance.''

SME is a non-profit alliance of individuals working together to create, edit and share information and solutions to issues of common interest. This collaborative website is one of the tools we use to do so. Here you can talk about anything to do with your "small & medium sized enterprise".

What is an "SME"?
Small and medium enterprises (also SMEs, small and medium businesses, SMBs, and variations thereof) are companies whose headcount or turnover falls below certain limits.The abbreviation SME occurs commonly in the European Union and in international organizations, such as the World Bank, the United Nations and the WTO. The term small and medium-sized businesses or SMBs is predominantly used in the USA.

The EU's current definition categorizes companies with fewer than 10 employees as "micro", those with fewer than 50 employees as "small", and those with fewer than 250 as "medium" Small medium organizations need to have between 20-500 employees .[1] By contrast, in the United States, when small business is defined by the number of employees, it often refers to those with fewer than 100 employees, while medium-sized business often refers to those with fewer than 500 employees.

More on SME's?

Our Goal
Our goal is to:
 * help individuals to optimize their personal and technical success within the enterprise they are involved in by:
 * being fully informed
 * sharing competent administration systems and
 * freeing themselves from redundant practices and systems.

We all know SME's have to work together to compete, particularly against other larger well organised enterprises (including governments). This may seem paradoxical at first but think about it. Each SME's:
 * success is based on it's productivity relative to its competitor and
 * each has their own unique specialisation or "know how"

however,
 * their productivity is often severly hampered by their ernormous amount of administration (e.g. accounting, tax, etc.)


 * they typically have limited systems to manage their needs yet
 * their needs are all common to one another.

By definition an SME will never have enough resources e.g. to:


 * design, implement, maintain and constantly upgrade the systems necessary to:


 * minimize their administration and to
 * update them on all of the developments in each of their business areas (e.g. production, marketing, finance, etc.).

The SME Community is working together to create common solutions to common issues e.g.:
 * minimise each SME's common non-profit making activities e.g. administration, tax, etc. which leaves them free to
 * maximise their productivity and "know how"