Research group NPD is reporting that business to business channel sales for this year will be stronger than 2020’s $93Billion. This is attributed to return to work, software deployment, and the backlog in hardware orders.
Gartner is predicting governments around the world will increase their IT budgets by 6.5% in 2022 – and 64% of that spend will go to “IT services and software to improve responsiveness and resilience of public services”. COVID-19 is the catalyst for digital transformation, and Gartner predicts more than 50% of government agencies will have modernized legacy software and improved their resilience by 2025.
KPMG’s survey of CEO sentiment has about 60% saying they are confident about what’s ahead for the global economy, the highest since January 2020. Of course, the Conference Board also said that consumer confidence sank to a six-month low, and University of Michigan’s survey is even worse.
That said, Pluralsight is reporting on a upskilling – employees getting advanced skills via additional education and training. The company found that since early 2020, remote employees reported that skills involving cloud computing, cybersecurity, and data storage were most lacking in their daily routines. The report also found that most remote employees’ confidence to do their current jobs was down 13% from a year ago as office adjustments were made. Additionally, technologists in small organizations showed lower levels of satisfaction with upskilling resources (65%) than their peers at extra-large (73%) and large (82%) companies.
Location also appears to be mattering less for hiring – in a new survey from management consulting company alliantgroup, about one-third (30%) are “expanding tech talent recruiting to outside typical high-tech areas” and 25% said they were “opening up offices in these non-high-tech locations to support their initiatives,”
Careful of that sales boost for return to work – that’s being delayed. I’d offer Gartner is more accurate, seeing investment in technology for governments because of modernization… which is true in business too.
There’s a solid disconnect here between CEOs and consumers – and I would offer employees too. All the signs point to a growing disconnect. My take is that this disconnect is a lack of understanding of the changing sentiment of consumers, employees, and customers. There’s clear signs of cultural trauma… which isn’t equally shared. And that’s the key insight for me… which one then applies to understanding their own individual business situation. Are your employees reeling and have a new sense of what they want? Or customers? Apply that filter.