RURAL businesses are being prevented taking full advantage of the digital economy by a lack of skills and training, a new report has warned.
While they are keen to embrace e-commerce and artificial intelligence they are being hindered by a lack of digital support and trained workforce, which leaves them lagging behind urban rivals.
According to the report drawn up by Amazon for Scotland’s Rural College (SRUC), and Rural England, 80 per cent of countryside businesses use digital tools and services to trade goods and services around the world.
But while the digital world has transformed how they operate, 52 per cent say they still face obstacles to unlocking more growth, such as recruiting people with appropriate skills and accessing training for their existing workforce.
The two organisations have now joined forces to call for a new focus on supporting countryside businesses.
Dr Jane Atterton, of the Rural Policy Centre at SRUC, said: “Rural businesses are already making use of connectivity where they can, something which is bringing business benefits and improving the global competitiveness of our rural economy.
“However, it’s clear they want to do more and can be better supported to do so, whether that’s through skills training or with digital support.”
Slow broadband speeds, poor internet connection and high costs have already been highlighted as a significant issue for many Scottish rural businesses.
Earlier this month it emerged that the Glen Clova Hotel in Angus was handed an £80,000 quote to upgrade its current 0.5mbps connection to 100mbps.
Meanwhile, Digital Minister Matt Hancock has criticised the Scottish Government for making slow progress on rolling out superfast broadband, claiming Scotland is now lagging behind the rest of the country.
The Scottish Government has a commitment to provide 100 per cent superfast broadband access by 2021.
However, according to a consultation of over 800 rural businesses by SRUC and Rural England, poor connectivity is just one issue affecting growth, with over half pointing to a variety of skills-related obstacles.
Almost one third said they have difficulty finding external or outsourced digital connectivity support, 14 per cent have difficulty accessing appropriate external digital training for the existing workforce and one-in-five say their existing workforce lacks sufficient skills and struggle to recruit people with appropriate digital skills.
Yet despite the shortfall in training and skills, almost four-in-five rural business owners believe digital tools and services are important to their future growth potential.
They placed cloud computing as the biggest driver, followed by 5G mobile networks, the Internet of Things and machine learning or artificial intelligence.
However, the report points to rural successes, including IceRobotics based in South Queensferry, which is among the 62 per cent of rural businesses which uses cloud computing.
The firm, which provides data collection and analysis products for monitoring dairy cow behaviour to the farming sector, uses cloud computing and sensor technologies to monitor the fertility and health of livestock in dairy farming.
The work enables farmers to see alerts and visualisations of how their livestock are moving so they can manage their herds more productively.
Douglas Armstrong, CEO of IceRobotics, said: “The growth potential cloud computing brings to the agricultural sector is significant, so the faster we get rural businesses adopting new technology, the more globally competitive rural Britain will be.”
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