United Kingdom
Two thirds of TMT clients are feeling positive about the next quarter - Julian Frost
Technology & Telecoms 60 Second Survey
The TMT Team recently surveyed senior executives from the technology and telecoms sectors to find out their views on the economy, the current status of their business confidence and challenges over the upcoming year.
The results from this quarter’s survey were extremely encouraging: over two-thirds of respondents indicated that their business confidence over the coming year was either positive or very positive, with only 2.5 per cent feeling negative about prospects over the forthcoming year.
The primary worry for businesses is the deferral of projects, emphasising the importance of agreeing a timescale to projects with clients at an early stage. Falling customer demand, unsurprisingly, was the second most popular concern cited by businesses with 17 per cent of responses. Many of the unique responses received were concerns about keeping up to speed on fast-evolving technologies and being “left behind” in the innovation race, emphasising the importance of not shying away from R&D spend – even if costs are right.
Encouragingly, 58 per cent of businesses claimed to be ready to deal with their top challenges, with only 2 per cent believing they were not ready. 39 per cent claimed that they had plans in progress to counter their major challenges. The importance of having a plan in place cannot be emphasised enough, so we would recommend that businesses that have yet to cement their plans do so as soon as possible in order to protect themselves.
Overall, businesses are feeling more positive about their prospects for 2010. The key to riding out the downturn appears to be committing clients to contracts, continuing with tight cost controls and maintaining a strong innovation strategy.