New Delhi, May 1 (KNN)  Small businesses around the world including India lose more than USD 24 billion in productivity every year when non-technical employees, referred to as involuntary IT managers (IITMs), are tasked with managing their company's IT solutions, a study commissioned by software giant Microsoft said. 

This loss is a direct result of the IITMs taking time away from their primary business activities, the AMI-Partners small-business study, said earlier this week. 
In India, the study found small businesses lost USD 2.67 billion in productivity, while spending USD 6.67 billion on IT/Telecom. 

"Many small businesses do not have the budget for formal IT support, so they rely on the company's most tech-savvy individual to manage their technology," AMI-Partners Chairman and CEO Andy Bose said. 

Relying on IITMs can have an adverse impact on small businesses' productivity, which can negatively affect revenue and translates into a very high opportunity cost, he added.

The Involuntary IT Manager study researched the prevalence of the IITM role in nine countries in North America, Latin America, the Middle East and Asia, focusing specifically on the adverse business productivity impact of IITMs in small business in five countries: Australia, Brazil, Chile, India and the United States.

Surveying 538 IITMs across nationally representative samples of small businesses with 100 employees or less in the five countries, the AMI-Partners research study determined that approximately 3.8 million small businesses managed internal IT by IITMs.

The small businesses lost USD 24 billion in productivity despite spending USD 83 billion on IT and communications by trying to manage their internal IT.

The survey also found that small businesses’ IITMs think cloud-based solutions can help alleviate some of the burden of managing IT, the study said.

On average, IITMs lose six hours per week (around 300 hours per year) of business productivity while managing IT, it added. 

About 30 per cent of the surveyed IITMs said they felt IT management is a nuisance, while 26 per cent indicated they do not feel qualified to manage IT. 

Six out of 10 IITMs said they wanted to simplify their company's technology solutions to alleviate the difficulty of managing day-to-day IT. 

IITMs in India lose 7.6 hours of productivity per week managing IT, the highest productivity loss of all countries surveyed.  (KNN)