The findings report that SME firms in Europe are set for €410 billion capital expenditure over next 12 months, with nearly two-and-a-half new jobs planned across seven European markets.
The highest new job figures are being driven by companies in Germany (890,000 new jobs), businesses in the UK (661,000), French companies (299,000) and firms in Poland (232,000).
Rising employment at SMEs in Europe is being driven by the improving economic climate (37 per cent), while increasing orders and cross-border business (47 per cent) is driving job creation in the Central and Eastern Europe markets.
The most confident markets were shown to be the UK (54 per cent) and Germany (45 per cent), with confidence increasing across all other markets surveyed.
A surprise in this year's findings was the increase in confidence and planned investment among French SMEs.
Before the end of the previous year, the French economy was seen to be stabilising after a difficult 2013, but manufacturing there has since stabilised and returned to growth, showing increased output in March at the fastest rate in three years.
The SME Capex Barometer report's findings were based on a survey of 2,250 business leaders in the first quarter of 2014.
One of its most positive notes was that SMEs no longer see economic uncertainty as being such a significant obstacle to investment, with just under a third reporting this to be a barrier, compared to around 43 per cent the previous year.
The three biggest markets for increases in capital expenditure this year were forecast to be: France (€90 billion, up 41 per cent on the previous year), the UK (€71 billion, up 12 per cent), and Poland (€31 billion, up 33 per cent).
Businesses in Western Europe said they planned increased investment in IT hardware, software and office equipment this year (particularly in France, Germany, Italy, and the UK), while company spending on manufacturing and commercial vehicle assets is set to fall.
Polish SMEs reported plans to spend more than any other market (€119,000, up 33 per cent from Q1 2013).
Conversely, two countries were predicted by the business intelligence report as being negative movers where spending was concerned: Italy (€60 billion, down 24 per cent) and Czech Republic (€13 billion, down 16 per cent).
Adrian Ashurst, CEO of Worldbox Business Intelligence, said the report's key figures broadly represented what he is seeing through the current research trends, with increases in the numbers of business registrations, and more people being hired.
He said: "Our own data supports the idea that confidence is growing across the European business landscape, including more jobs being made available and being filled by more businesses, as well as an uptick in the number of new enterprises registering across the continent. We have also seen increases in the amount of work being outsourced from Europe, with particular attention in the respect to IT outsourcing to Indian companies".
