Mid / medium / Growing / MSB - What’s in a medium-size business name?

Genuine question! Here at Microsoft we categorise a medium-sized (or in US terms, mid-size) business as having around 50-250 PCs, regardless of revenue, profit margin, employees etc. We describe a small business as one with 1-50 (approx) PCs.

The Department for Business Innovation & Skills (BIS), however, doesn’t categorise by size, but by revenue – and they also use the term Mid-sized Businesses or MSBs. Take a look at all their research material and collateral published in support of the MSB initiative launched earlier this month on 9 January, and you’ll see that the DTI definition of an MSB is by revenue of between 25-500 million pa. If you dig a bit deeper, this encompasses businesses with as few as 25 employees (which we would call a small business) and as many as 4,500 employess (including part-time workers).

Here at Microsoft we have separate mid-market (@MicrosoftBizUk) and small business (@MicrosoftSB) Twitter channels and separate blogs – Medium Business Blogspot and Small Business. But we’re questioning whether it would be more meaningful to combine the two….

HOWEVER….

We’re not prescriptive on this – companies (large, small and inbetween/growing) use whatever is meaningful for their sales and marketing teams and it’s OK if different terms mean different things in different organisations.

In the US, we have a Microsoft Business Hub (in beta), offering ‘technical and business solutions for your company’. This addresses the needs of small/growing/medium organisations up to what we would classify as an ‘Enterprise’ ie 500+ PCs.…

SO

In a roundabout way, I guess we’re asking for your views? Are you a medium-sized business? An MSB? A small but growing?!

Let us know!