A recent CyStat survey found that the coronavirus outbreak forced more Cyprus firms to find high tech solutions for their businesses while making the most of digital marketing campaigns.

According to the Survey on Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) Usage and e-Commerce in Enterprises 2021, Cypriot firms needed speed and infrastructure during the pandemic to accommodate employees working from home.

In 2020, the first year of the pandemic, 35.3% of all enterprises reported an increased number of employees needing remote access to email systems, while 32.9% saw an increase in staff having remote access to the ICT system.

And 54.4% of companies reported an increase in the number of remote meetings conducted via Skype, Zoom, MS Teams, etc.

Furthermore, 22.7% of all enterprises said due to Covid-19, they started or increased efforts to sell goods or services via the internet.

During the pandemic, Cypriot firms were no longer satisfied with low-speed connections.

Demand for high-speed internet connections (100 Mbit/s or more) has increased significantly.

In 2021, 6.7% of all enterprises with 10 or more employees have internet connection speeds higher than 1 Gbit/s, 7.9% have internet connection speeds between  500  Mbit/s  –  1  Gbit/s, and  30.2% have internet connection speeds between 100 – 500 Mbit/s.

On the other hand, enterprises with internet speeds lower than 30 Mbit/s have been decreasing steadily over the years from 81.7% in 2016 to 15.5% in 2021.

Speeds between 30 – 100 Mbit/s remain the most popular but have dropped since the previous year (-1,0%), while internet speeds between 100Mbit/s -500Mbit/s have increased significantly from 19.8% in 2020 to 30.2%.

Cloud computing in Cyprus is becoming more popular.

In 2021, 50.3% of enterprises with ten or more employees bought Cloud Computing services, compared to 34.6% in 2020.

The main use of cloud computing services is for email (41.9%), for security software applications (35.8%), for office software (34.4%) and storage of files (30.3%).

In 2020, 18.8% of all enterprises received goods and services orders via computer networks compared to  16.4%  in  2019, 18.3% received goods and services orders via websites or “apps”, and 1.4% via EDI–type messages.

Last year, 17.5% of enterprises received orders via websites or “apps” from customers located in Cyprus, 7.8% from other EU countries and 5.9% from the rest of the world.

Social media campaigns have also increased from 57% in 2015 to 77.1% in 2021.

Social networks like Facebook, LinkedIn were the most favoured amongst enterprises.

The second most popular in 2021 was multimedia content sharing websites such as  YouTube and  Flickr.

Source: Financial Mirror