Global Views on Verticals

Our emphasis, here at TechMarketView LLP, is on the UK and how developments and trends in technology affect players (of whatever origin) in the UK market. But we are still interested in the global scene too. And that's where our partner, PAC, comes in. PAC has just released its global forecast by vertical and makes the following comments.

Manufacturing
The economic crisis impacted the manufacturing sector most severely across the globe, particularly in the automotive, mechanical engineering, chemicals and metal sectors, while pharmaceuticals, food and aerospace & defense proved more resilient. For manufacturing companies, the focus in 2010 will clearly remain on short-term savings through consolidation and standardization of both assets and contracts and particularly on outsourcing contracts.

The recovery will not happen until the second half of this year and will be driven by investment in embedded systems, PLM - including integration with PDM, ERP and CRM - collaboration, MRO and CRM supporting after-sales services.

Banking
The situation in banking will remain highly differentiated from country-to-country, depending on the level of government aid and the structure of the industry, such as the importance of investment banking, private banking and semi-public saving banks. Banks will have several major issues to solve in 2010, with compliance continuing to generate the bulk of IT investments. Other issues include customer loyalty, post-merger integration, STP/ industrialization, data consolidation and processing, and these issues can only be solved through IT.

Insurance
Insurance companies are in a slightly better situation, as revenues (premiums) are quite stable. 2010 investments topics include multi-channel integration, CRM, web-based, front-end and legacy modernization.

Public Sector
The public sector has been very resilient in most countries in 2009 as federal investment programs have supported demand; however municipalities and regional governments face decreasing tax income and most countries’ debt level will be a heavy burden for the years to come. PAC expects a progressive slowdown of growth in spending despite the implementation of new bookkeeping standards, regulations such as the European service rule and some hotly anticipated e-government projects. The biggest difference between the countries is that outsourcing is highly developed in countries like the UK or Australia, while countries like France, Eastern Europe and China are late adopters.

Telecoms
Telecom will continue to suffer from strong price pressure. Major IT in 2010 projects will include NGN (next generation networks) and the development of new (value added) services (mobile payments, web 2.0, content, etc.).

Utilities 
Utilities are both a traditionally resilient market and are benefiting from some industry-specific issues: liberalization, unbundling, information management, smart grid and smart metering. Similar to the public sector, outsourcing tendencies vary strongly between countries.

Retail
Retail will remain a very difficult market in most countries, especially in countries dominated by discounters. Discounters are well known to be both very economical and the toughest purchasers. On one hand, there should be interesting investment areas such as materials management, BI and multi-channel integration. On the other hand, the retail market might be hit hard by bankruptcies.

Services and Consumers
Services and consumers is a very diverse industry and very much impacted by the crisis. Interesting investment areas will include multi-channeling and billing in media and process automation in professional services.

Transport
Transport includes both logistics (strongly impacted) and passenger transportation (less affected, except airlines). Investment areas in 2010 should include fourth-and-fifth-party logistics and customer-oriented solutions such as ticketing, check-in, portals, and payments.

PAC’s Chief Analyst, Christophe Châlons, remains cautious – as are we at TechMarketView – for the much anticipated recovery in 2010.  “There are still important risks linked with unemployment, credit crunch and resulting bankruptcies. Even if volumes are expected to recover in the course of 2010, average prices and rates will be lower than in 2009, thus limiting market recovery," concludes Châlons.

TechMarketView would be delighted to supply you with more details on PAC’s products and services – in particular its European SITSI Research Programme. Contact prajah@techmarketview.com for more details.

Posted by Richard Holway at '16:19'