Techaisle Blog

They are here. Techaisle's annual SMB and Midmarket Top 10 IT Priorities, IT Challenges and Business Issues. This is the 5th year of Techaisle tracking at a WW level and is much sought after by IT vendors, channels and media. For 2017, Techaisle investigated 15 different technology areas, each with several sub-technology categories, 20 different IT challenges and 20 different business issues.

Click on the infographic images below to view and download your copy

When compared with 2016 the list for 2017 SMB and Midmarket Top 10 IT Priorities, IT Challenges and Business Issues reveals major changes – digitalization has become an IT priority and supporting digital marketing/workplace an IT challenge, improving workforce productivity as a business issue has catapulted to the top, enabling mobile workforce is among the top 3 IT challenges and Collaboration, Cloud, Mobility and Security are the IT priorities. Cloud orchestration has also appeared for the first time in the list of IT challenges as IT is finding it necessary to orchestrate across the entire enterprise to deliver business infrastructure via the cloud.

As part of SMB Compass Series, Techaisle has just released a free and detailed report on Salesforce for SMBs – Advantages, Limitations & Competitor comparisons. The report is focused on Salesforce solution portfolio for SMBs and acts as guidance for SMBs deciding to use CRM solutions and planning to use Salesforce solutions as well as competitor solutions. The report has been compiled based on deep discussions with SMBs using Salesforce, partners providing Salesforce implementation for SMBs and Techaisle global cloud surveys. The report covers Salesforce Cloud, SalesforceIQ, Salesforce Analytics Cloud, Salesfroce Pardot and Salesforce Marketing Cloud.

Salesforce has been leading the charge in cloud CRM and has been adding product offerings to its portfolio to provide end-to-end solution attracting, managing & retaining customers. Survey data also shows that within the US, Salesforce appears within top 10 cloud vendors as mentioned by SMBs. 

Click on the report cover image to download the report

Table of Contents is given below

Techaisle’s worldwide SMB & Midmarket cloud adoption surveys show that 38% of small businesses and 48% of midmarket firms are planning to use cloud CRM in the next 12 months. Data also shows that there is a very strong correlation between top business issues for 2017 and use of CRM. Within midmarket firms, improving effectiveness of sales & marketing is the second top business issue and fourth from the top for overall SMBs. In addition, attracting & retaining new customers /improving customer satisfaction is the 2nd most important business issue for SMBs.

SMB Cloud is no longer a trend that is discrete from mainstream IT. Data presented in Techaisle’s cloud reports shows that cloud is viewed as an IT priority by 96% of US SMBs, by over 85% of European SMBs and nearly 65% of Asia/Pacific SMBs. Within Asia/Pacific if very small businesses are excluded then cloud as a priority jumps substantially. Cloud is not a future issue – it has become an essential component of SMB IT and is the new IT reality. Techaisle’s surveys of SMBs not only found a strong link between cloud and IT – it also found a strong link between cloud, IT and business success. The research data shows that technology is viewed as critical to the success of SMB businesses and that cloud provides a compelling response to SMB business issues and cloud also addresses constraints within the SMB market.

SMBs are sometimes seen as small fish in a pond that is also home to much larger creatures. They are subject to tides and actions that tend to derail their businesses and are strongly felt: when business lags, when orders grow sparse, when supplier costs increase, when the competitive environment changes. Cloud offers direct relief for several of these business pressures.

Cloud is clearly established within the US SMB market, in a way that is unique in the global context: nowhere else have the vast majority of SMBs leapt into the cloud. Cloud is also gaining acceptance in Asia/Pacific, Europe & even in Middle-East, regions where Cloud is being seen by SMBs as solving real-world business problems. But most suppliers are peddling their technology assets, focusing on non-viable channel relationships & showcasing wrong-sized solutions for workloads that have very short acquisition & deployment time window.