Finance for Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises - DTI Home Page

Finance for Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises: A Report on the 2004 UK Survey of SME Finances
The above figure shows that the median self-confidence scores are high. These scores
are:
• 10 for production
• 8 for sales, staffing, finance and red-tape
The bulk of
scores (within the box) are between:
• 8 and 10 for production.
• 7 and 10 for sales, staff and finance.
• 6 and 10 for red-tape.
The incidence of very low self-confidence scores is characterized by the length of the
whisker, extending below the box, and by individually identified data-points (circles)
below the whisker. 21 In this regard we note that all areas of business operations have
some instances of low self-confidence: 2% of businesses report a lack of selfconfidence
(a score of 5 or less) in production; 10% lack self-confidence in sales; 8%
lack self-confidence in staffing; 16% lack self-confidence in finance; and 22% lack
self-confidence in coping with red-tape (see Table A2.3.2).
In total, these results indicate that:
• Production is the area of operation in which owner managers have the
highest degree of self-confidence in their abilities.
• Coping with red-tape is the area with the lowest self-confidence.
• Self-confidence in financial operations is intermediate.
Separate analysis of confidence levels, among majority female owned, ethnic
minority, start-up and high-growth businesses, are reported in the Appendix to
Section 2 (Tables A2.3.2a-d). This analysis shows that:
• Female owned businesses have similar levels of confidence, across all
aspects of business operations, as the average levels.
• 25% of ethnic minority owned businesses report a lack of self-confidence
(score of 5 or less)
with finance, which is below the average (16%).
• 28% of ethnic minority owned businesses report a lack of self-confidence in
dealing with red-tape, which is below the average (22%).
• 16% of start-ups report a lack of self-confidence with sales (versus 10% on
average).
• Only 1% of high growth businesses report a lack of self-confidence with
sales (versus 10% on average).
Financial qualifications
or training
Regarding financial skills, we also asked, sole-traders and partnerships, whether
the
person in charge of the business’ financial management had any financial
qualifications or training.
21 The whiskers extend out below (resp. above) the box to the smallest (largest) data-point within a
distance of 1.5 times the width of the inter-quartile range. Any scores lower than this are plotted
individually.
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