What a rollercoaster ride since the last post. We’ve seen a giant maelstrom of economic bad news cripple consumer and investor confidence. The irony is that the market will not rebound until confidence is restored, but this won’t happen until the positive news outweighs the negative. Good luck with that if you happen to watch television or read the paper. You’d think these talking heads get paid variable on the number of negative stories they report – hell, maybe even commission on every negative word!!
So with all the doom and gloom, is Technology still a good place to be? Absolutely! Will there be pain? Yes. The amount of pain will largely depend upon to what extent budgets and in particular capital expenditures are cut. CFO Magazine reported in September survey that the majority of CFOs believe the turnaround will occur before Q3 2009. Even if CFOs tighten the reigns, technology has become so ingrained in operational execution that IT spend will continue. The crux is how much budget will be accessible for investment in new technology. I don’t know about you guys, but the margin on renewals makes the hospitality industry look attractive!!
In the last six weeks, I’ve been to the Midmarket CIO Summit, Oracle Open World, CRM University and Epicor Perspectives. If the attendance at Oracle Open World was an indicator on the economy, it would be a bull market. Around 30,000 attendees at about $1,000 per for conference fees offset Oracle’s expenses by $30 million. San Francisco businesses and the travel industry got at least 3x out of the deal!
At the Midsize CIO Summit, Gartner analyst Jim Browning, shared tidbits of a recent CIO survey indicating that the hot spots for tech sales in 2009 are Business Intelligence, Virtualization (storage & replication), Security (for everything at the network level), Compliance Automation and Cloud Computing (including SaaS and IT infrastructure). In order to drive sales, Jim recommended that we must be ready to demonstrate how we save money, improve margins, secure investment in the existing IT infrastructure as well as align with key business objectives.
At CRM University and Epicor Perspectives, manufacturers of all shapes and sizes were busy optimizing their back office systems with SaaS and on-premise CRM and ERP applications. Despite what the media and the Obama campaign is saying, people are still buying stuff!!
Last night I was talking with a good friend in Chicago, a residential building contractor. He told me that his company was losing steam and planning layoffs. “No one can qualify for a loan anymore so nobody is buying. We’ve got two new houses that have not been looked at once since they were built six weeks ago!” We agreed that the tighter it gets, the more important it will be to be “the best”.
To that end, I believe this economic hiccup will further separate the wheat from the chaff. You can weather the storm by looking at this time as an opportunity to grow stronger. Those of us who learn to engage customers as a business person instead of a sales person will prosper. Some of us will close the gap through hard work, persistence and a bit of luck. And still others will get out of Tech and into something less stressful, like event planning or commercial fishing!
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