Compass Intelligence

The overall housing crisis is expected to hit the IT market to some extent either through tighter lending practices to businesses or consumers slowing spending on gadgets and services.  At this point, it is expected to affect consumer spending more so than business.  I wanted to share a few interesting tidbits and facts about the current housing and banking market pulled from Financial press releases, Bloomberg Data, and RealtyTrac:

• Citigroup and Washington Mutual have recently reported losses, while Wells Fargo reported profits
• Countrywide Financial Corp. and IndyMac Bancorp have closed down, Bank of America purchased Countrywide becoming the largest lender
• Citigroup is the largest bank in the U.S., is expected to disclose earnings tomorrow
• More than 100 businesses/banks have closed, been sold, or halted operations due to the subprime lending practices
• California ranked Second amoung U.S. states in June for foreclosures (According to RealtyTrac Inc.)
• Foreclusures nationwide increased 53 percent in June compared to June of 2007
• More than $400 billion of losses and writedowns have been liked to the U.S. housing slump, according to Bloomberg data

I hope everyone enjoyed the July 4th weekend and festivities!  Well, it is that time of year to start our marketing and strategic planning for next year.  As we do this, I think it is important to understand what the decision-makers are thinking about.  In this case, let's talk about the greatest challenges they are faced with when it comes to IT and technology solutions.  We recently surveyed 1382 IT decision-makers and asked them "Which, if any, in your opinion represent the key IT challenges facing your firm in 2008?"

The answers are below.  As you can see in the chart, the top challenges facing these IT decision-makers include increasing the productivity of workers, lowering operating costs associated with IT systems, and improving their websites.  This being said, these are all good factors that can help guide your marketing messages, sales tactics, and strategic plans regarding your customers in late 2008 and 2009.  Others that topped the list include upgrading computers and managing customer relationships using the Internet.  What do you think about these challenges?  Will they be useful for your planning?  Please let me know if you have any ideas about this or other data we are collecting from decision-makers. 

IT Decision-Maker Challenges, 2008-2009

 Source: Compass Intelligence 04/08

Compass Intelligence (www.compassintelligence.com) recently surveyed 1383 IT decision-makers and asked them "Thinking about your company as a whole, which of the following carriers, if any, does your company or organization use for company-provided cell phones? Often companies give employees a choice of more than one carrier."  As you can see below, the numbers look really close to market share data that you see out there in the analyst world, of course the numbers may vary but the comparisons of the vendors is pretty close to what we see out there in the news and analyst reports.  AT&T and Verizon are running neck-and-neck in terms of the top choice of business IT decision-makers for cell phones, while Sprint runs a very distant 3rd.  T-Mobile hits 4th with about 11 percent of the respondents stating they use T-Mobile's cell phones. 

 Businesses today are really looking for those providers that can provide them business-oriented devices such as Blackberries, Treos, and others.  They are also looking for devices that can help with productivity.  We also asked these same decision-makers about their top challenges for 2008 and 2009 and the top choice selected (44 percent) was increasing productivity of the workers.  This being said, devices including cellphones, smartphones, handheld computing devices, and even laptops must address each industries specific productivity concerns.  Applications that are moving to a mobile environment will be very successful if they can be marketed and even give ROI on improving productivity with workers across industry.  This means some applications will have to be specific to the industry in which the business user is in.  For example an E-Prescription application on a Doctor's smartphone or handheld, or access to  Manufacturing Execution System for a Factory Floor Manager.  I would love to hear about your thoughts on the future of business applications, mobile and non-mobile.  Please let me know what you think.  Have a Happy Fourth of July!

U.S Business Decision-Maker Choice of Cell Phone Vendor, 2008 (Sample Size: 1383)

Source: Compass Intelligence, 06/08