Most businesses in Latin America would be considered "Small and Medium-size" businesses, which we shorten to SMB, but in some places is shortened to SME for "Small and Medium sized Enterprises." The problem with SME is that we often use this to refer to "subject-matter experts," so it can be confusing.

The problem with many acronyms is that in other countries, the letters are re-arranged, based on the syntax of the language.ISO is actually the International Organization for Standards.

Today, we learned about PYME. In Spanish, this stands for pequeñas y medianas empresas, which is literally "small" and "medium" businesses. Of course, most of my colleagues had not recognized PYME, and most of the people we talked to did not understand SMB. Once we equated one to the other, things went smoothly.

For those not familiar with Latin America, I suggest the movieRomancing The Stone, starring Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner.

It's worth a watch.

technorati tags: IBM, SMB, SME, PYME, Spanish, Latin America, Romancing the Stone