Market Trends – How Do They Impact Your Business?
2/11/11 at 12:24 AM by Frank Coker Serious boaters, and especially sail boaters, will tell you that plotting a course to your destination is critical but not enough to get you there. You also need to compensate for winds and currents. You need to know about tide changes and current flows and how they impact your course or you might find yourself at an unintended destination.
Business owners need to understand the currents of the market and make smart decisions about when it is good to go with the current and when it is better to head into the current. If you have been watching the economy over the past 2 years, you know that there are many mixed signals. Some markets have been growing and others that are going backwards. These conditions are tough to navigate in.
The IT services market has been a very interesting study in going the opposite direction of the general economy. In 2009 while the general economy was trying to find the bottom of a downward trend, IT services companies were experiencing major growth. Then when the economy hit bottom and started to slowly move in a positive direction, IT services went flat and in some cases negative. These trends gets even more interesting when you look at which IT service business models did well and which did poorly. In all likelihood, the pattern is going to flip as we move into a positive economy. It’s likely that the biggest winners of the past 2 years will become the laggards in the year ahead while the low performers become the new stars.
To learn more about which is which, take a look at the article written by Larry Walsh, one of our industry pundits and CEO of a new market research and consulting firm, The 2112 Strategy Group, LLC. Larry’s 2112 Group and CoreConnex team have formed a collaborative venture called the IT Channel Barometer. The first white paper produced by the venture is entitled Solution Provider Revenue Performance 2008-2010. This is important information for the captain of any sea-worthy ship! We will keep you posted as new navigational aids arrive.