Smaller businesses in New York seem confident that problems making computer systems year 2000-compliant will be minor, an informal survey of Business Council members shows.
However, respondents showed less confidence in the ability of their suppliers and distributors to meet the challenge.
The Council published a brief survey in the September 4 issue of The Wire and asked members to fax responses.
Of the 42 members that faxed completed surveys, 33 of them, 79 percent, reported having 200 employees or fewer. Only two employers with more than 1,000 employees responded.
More than half of respondents (59 percent) said the potential impact of Y2K problems could be severe (26 percent) or moderate (33 percent), with a 40 percent saying the impact would be low (33 percent) or none (7 percent)
Nearly nine of 10 respondents-88 percent-said they had high confidence that they would successfully address all Y2K problems by January 1, 2000. Most of the rest, 9.5 percent, said they had moderate confidence.
Most respondents-86 percent-said that their progress in addressing these problems is advanced (50 percent) or moderate (36 percent).
Eighty-one percent of respondents indicated high (24 percent) or moderate (57 percent) concern about their suppliers. Half of the respondents had high (17 percent) or moderate (33 percent) concerns about their distributors.
Most frequently cited areas of concern were accounting and finance (33 percent) and customer databases (21.4 percent).