SME
Small and Medium-Sized Enterprise (SME)
SMEs are, under common definitions, companies with fewer than 250 full-time employees, a category that in Switzerland is central to statistics and economic policy.
SME: Not to be confused with
The line between an SME and a large enterprise is NOT regulated uniformly. Different national statistical offices and the EU apply slightly different thresholds for headcount, revenue and balance sheet total.
Switzerland’s Federal Statistical Office counts companies with fewer than 250 full-time equivalents as SMEs, further split into micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (Source 1). The European Commission adds thresholds for annual turnover and balance sheet total to this size classification (Source 2).
Company size is a key criterion for ERP selection: systems such as SAP S/4HANA are built for larger headcounts, while many Swiss SME solutions were specifically developed for smaller structures, see the systems overview.