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The South African Small and Medium Enterprise (SME) sector is the new target for technology companies seeking to sell products and services. However, what does this turnaround in attitude mean for the small business owner?

In the past SMEs were seen as too small, with limited resources, requiring too much investment in time and back-up support from vendors. Also, it took too many small transactions to generate the same revenue that a large corporate or government contracts would make. So, the focus was on winning large government tenders and winning corporate clients, which brought in huge revenues once the contract was signed.

As for SMEs, it was much easier to sell them products and services that almost fit, and if the match was not so prefect, that was just too damn bad. You get what you pay for, and SMEs were seen to be paying little.

However, circumstances are changing and recently a number of ICT companies (ICT), such as Telkom, Cisco Systems, Acer and Dell have publicly stated the SME sector is a recognized growth market and they are developing ICT products and services aimed specifically to meet their needs.

African research house BMI-TechKnowledge says while SMEs accounted for 20% of technology companies' revenue in 2006, their contribution will grow to 80% by 2015. Cinderella is becoming the favored princess, but what does all this new attention mean for the small business owner?

Your needs count

Technology providers are making an effort to understand the technology needs of SMEs and what particular challenges they have to deal with to thrive.

What this means is that as a favored buyer, you are now a position to make demands, and to give your business to whoever meets those demands best. Before, you could not complain too loudly, as you knew too well your hard earned cash wouldn't be missed too much anyway.

Products that fit

No longer does the SME owner/ manager have to take the technology solution that the salesman wants to sell and make do. The focus is now on ensuring that you get what you need to deliver your products and services efficiently.

Your supplier should also make sure that your technology solutions work efficiently, without uour having to worry about the details of how it works. "The SME owner is like a conductor, who guides his orchestra to deliver beautiful music. But he does not have to fine tune the musical instruments or worry about the acoustics of the theatre," an analyst says.

There are still complaints among SMEs that large vendors "dumb down" on products that were initially intended for the corporate market, but many more entrepreneurs are developing products specifically for small business enterprises. Appropriate funding model

One of the challenges that SMEs face is cash flow – SMEs never have too much coming in, and usually there is too much going out. Many vendors now offer funding models for technology investments that do not take hamper your SMEs operations.

Some of them even go as far as to say their funding models that allow you to keep money in your pocket, which you can use for other areas of your business. Find out how they can do that and if this kind of deal will cost you more than just paying cash in the long run.