the research
the listening: 2025
Understanding Tech Confidence, Capacity & Connection Across SMEs.
The Listening SME research brings forward the realities of technology for smaller businesses. It combines quantitative data with lived experience to reveal where digital maturity is developing, and what is holding it back.
This work was shaped by Beetroot Consulting to better understand the North West ecosystem and the experiences of smaller organisations, a group often overlooked, yet critical to both the regional economy and everyday human experience of technology.
It captures how leaders are making technology decisions under pressure, what support they trust, and what they need next.
These insights are designed to be used in practice, supporting founders, councils and business networks to build capability in ways that are grounded, community-led and actionable.
Data collection started July 2025
Report released February 2026

