As we near the year’s end, the lists are showing up. I’m working on my own 2023 prediction series too. I spotted the Top 10 SMB and Midmarket business issues, IT priorities, and challenges for 2023 from TechAisle, so let’s take a look.
I am quoting the analysis.
Significant changes in 2023 as compared to 2022 are:
- Driving innovation and managing uncertainty, absent in 2022, are among the top 10 business issues in 2023.
- Deploying customer experience solutions as an IT priority has moved to 4th place as compared to 9th in 2022. CCaaS is considered an integral component of customer experience solutions.
- Implementing employee experience platforms and 5G-enabled devices/applications are new IT priorities within the top 10 list. UCaaS is one of the technology areas being investigated by SMBs.
- Adopting collaboration technology solutions has move down from 3rd rank to 8th and hybrid workplace solutions as a priority ranks 10th as compared to 5th in 2022
- Budget constraint has been a constant IT challenge fixture for over a decade. For 2023, it has been replaced by cloud cost management. Cloud optimization and cost management are the top IT challenges for SMBs, Core-Midmarket, and Upper Midmarket firms.
- Preventing Cyberattacks, adopting Zero Trust, and moving to as-a-service technology acquisition for new IT challenges are among the top five.
- Sustainability is increasingly becoming relevant and essential for the SMB segment, and there is no surprise that it is among the top challenges.
- Integration, business process automation is now non-optional and a challenge, which is worsened because of the inability to find trained employees
So what’s in the top spots?
For Business Issues, it’s Increasing Profitability; for Technology Priorities, it’s the Cloud; and for IT Challenges, it’s finding qualified and trained people.
Why do we care?
I like trends, so I’ll focus there. Adding uncertainty to the mix feels like a significant change to note. I’ve indeed harped on it enough myself. It’s also worth considering that the collaboration space may have achieved some market deployment and acceptance level for it to move much lower on the list.
Budget management replaced by cost management. Or is that clever rebranding?
Obviously, aligning with your customer’s priorities is the goal. What’s more interesting to me today is ensuring offerings, and focus (including mine), stay in the right places.
And someone, please tell me whom these customers are asking for 5G specifically.