As the new year draws closer, organisations around the world will be working hard to build their technology investment programmes for 2021.
With the COVID-19 pandemic having accelerated Digital Transformation strategies, enterprises and SMEs alike will be keen to identify technology trends and areas to channel their investment for the year ahead.
And according to Gartner, IT spending in EMEA is forecast to total US$1.075 trillion in 2021, an increase of 2.8% from 2020, according to the latest forecast by Gartner, Inc.
This comes after the research and advisory company predicted IT spending in the region is expected to decline 6.5% in 2020.
“The combined effects of Brexit and the COVID-19 public health interventions will cause IT spending in EMEA to decline in 2020,” said John-David Lovelock, distinguished research Vice President at Gartner.
“Before the pandemic, most organisations moved their digital strategies forward at a steady pace. The way forward in 2021 is for organisations is to increase, rather than decrease, the speed of their digital business initiatives and fund those initiatives by diverting funds from other areas of IT.”
Spending across all segments is expected to decline in 2020. However, in 2021, as organisations start reconfiguring their business and operating models for a new reality, companies will increase their spending levels and shift the areas they are spending in.
How EMEA organisations will procure technology in 2021
Organisations have to respond to the public health interventions caused by COVID-19, Gartner have said.
One part of those efforts will be in spending on devices 2021. Devices spending by EMEA organisations will move from a decline of 15.1% 2020 to an increase of 1.7% in 2021.
Thin and light notebooks spending is on pace to grow 10% and desktop-as-a-service platforms spending will achieve a steep increase of 60% in EMEA in 2021.
SMEs are facing the challenge of balancing a changing working environment with the need to spend on digital solutions to elevate their brand services and operations. It can be difficult to know where to begin.
To help, we asked industry experts to tell us which technology areas they think SMEs should be prioritising in 2021, in this month’s Editor’s Question.
Ashish Panjabi, COO, Jackys Business Solutions
While there is no getting away from the drastic changes we have had to make as businesses in 2020, I think to a great extent it has prepared us for 2021. Some of the key areas I think all small businesses need to prioritise should include:
- Wi-Fi infrastructure
Most Wi-Fi networks were not designed for the kind of video traffic that we now have, given the amount of work we are doing in virtual settings, in addition to some of the other technology tools we are using for our marketing, customer relations etc. that involve larger bandwidths. It is worth upgrading to make sure you have fastest possible network technology as in most cases a router or access point is probably more than two years old and is holding back your internal network speeds.
Today most smart phones have the latest generation Wi-Fi chipsets in them. It is also worth checking with your service providers what the price of broadband packages for offices are at the moment because in many cases you may be grandfathered into a rate where you can access faster speeds for the same price or less – but if you don’t ask, you don’t benefit.
- Cybersecurity
With work from home, most IT network administrators have had to relax IT policies. Whilst that was needed at one stage, it can no longer be an excuse going forward.
Create and adapt new policies to accommodate the new ways of doing business. Make sure that you have the right protocols and safeguards in place to safeguard data and communications. If upgrades and improvements need to be made to accommodate the new normal, then this has to be done safely.
- Adopt the cloud
I am not sure that anyone has not adopted the cloud as yet but if you haven’t for your business, do it now. There are lots of options for different aspects of your business from productivity, to collaboration to communication to managing your services that suitable for companies of all sizes. Some of them might even help you save costs.
- Mice, monitors, headsets and webcams
With the hybrid office module in place, making sure your team have all the right equipment in place is important. Given how much more time we spend on virtual meetings as much as in real life, having the right accessories will make communications a lot easier and better. A decent headphone, for example, means that in this hybrid world, your communications, whether internal or external, are clear. A decent webcam is also important especially if you are doing a lot of online meetings or participating in online forums.
Luis Ortega, Managing Director for ME, Africa, India and ASEAN countries at Pagero
2020 has without a doubt been the most difficult year for businesses globally. SMEs operating in the B2C space have especially encountered challenges during this pandemic with customer facing services facing strict limitations to keep operations running.
SMEs in the B2C and B2B space, who rely heavily on manually-run back office processes, have seen a strong delay in serving customers or handling suppliers. Most of these back-office personnel were restricted in travel due to lockdown and/or in a working-from-home model paired with insufficient technology infrastructure to support their activity.
What we are experiencing moving into 2021 is a significant increase in requests from many businesses who want to digitalise their buying or selling processes. This is so that businesses can build resilience and independence from the traditional physical back office/shared service centre.
SMEs should prioritise investing heavily into digitalisation of both their operational and administrative functions, creating virtual global office spaces and establishing, as much as possible, full digital flows when the process does not include a physical movement of goods. These investments will future proof their organisations which will not be limited by the ongoing confinements and lockdowns but also will create significant efficiencies to their business as they can replace current fix operational costs and overheads by pay-per-use variable costs.
In this sense, Pagero’s teams are working today with both enterprises and SMEs globally to fully digitalise the communication of their trading documents including, but not limited to, customer orders, orders confirmations and invoices.
Approximately 50% of our revenue is generated by SMEs. For them, we offer solutions which are self-serviced to help them adopt technology in pay-per-use commercial models with almost no upfront investment and without technology knowledge required to set up the service from the customer side.
Finally, SMEs should prioritise looking at expanding their reach geographically through a network of sellers or distributors. In this case, digitalisation and smart business global networks can facilitate access to new markets without the need of physical presence, mitigating the risks associated with compliance requirements and aligning operational cost to real activity without the load of heavy overheads.
Tobias Raper – Asia Pacific CEO at Babl
Every business is different, has different needs, customers and channels and depending on their size, location and budget they will have access to an entirely different set of technologies. It is important to assess the right technology fit for the way the business operates right now with a consideration of how things will change in the future.
SMEs also need to assess how their market has changed during the pandemic, what their short fallings are and what will add the most value. Every SME wants to digitise or automate their manual business processes and COVID-19 has certainly accelerated Digital Transformation across every business for the better.
Now that business is not being done face to face, with so many people working at home and travel restricted, online video collaboration and communications platforms are more important than ever. It is important to consider how employees and teams will continue to engage with each other to maintain productivity levels and to encourage creativity. It is also important to optimise external communications to stay connected to clients, partners and suppliers and ensure relationships are mutually beneficial.
Businesses that are looking at investing in a web meeting platform should ensure that it can work smoothly with their existing technology and help streamline their business processes, rather than disrupt them. It is best to choose a provider that is dedicated to understanding how the business works and can customise the solutions to fit their requirements with minimal to no disruptions.
Security is an essential consideration too because we have all heard about the cybersecurity breaches that have occurred due to some of the less-secure web meeting platforms being plagued by uninvited attendees or snoopers accessing the recording after the meeting.
The right security measures ensure legal compliance and the safety of a business’ employees as well as its clients, so SMEs need to ensure that the web meeting platform does not require the download of an executable (.exe) and is purely cloud-based.
More enhanced security features to look for include ISO 27001 accredited data centres, 256-bit encryption, data sovereignty, MiFID II compliant call recordings among other basic and advanced security features depending on the type of business.
It is now about prioritising the most critical areas for each business and selecting the technology investments that will have the biggest impact in getting each business ready for optimal growth in this new world.