March 21, 2023

Despite the current economic uncertainty, 72% of high tech leaders in the United States, Canada, and Western Europe plan to increase revenue in 2023, according to a recent Gartner survey. Furthermore, nearly half of those leaders expect to outperform their competitors this year.

The survey was conducted in the second half of 2022 with 195 respondents from the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, France, and Germany. The survey’s goal was to learn how economic turbulence challenges general managers, their confidence in their ability to carry out their plans, and the measures they have planned to deal with the uncertainty.

Gartner Fellow and Vice President, Mark McDonald, said, “Outperforming the market through an uncertain market requires an above average ability to execute on revenue ambitions. The survey results indicate that almost half of firms (46%) do not have a sufficient ability to execute to reliably realize their revenue goals.”

Surprisingly, according to the survey, many technology leaders entered 2023 prepared for a possible recession. Contrary to popular belief, many of the actions taken were aimed at cutting costs rather than increasing revenue and market relevance.

Gartner predicts that overall IT spending will increase by 2.4% in 2023, with enterprise IT spending increasing by 4.1%. Buyers are increasingly valuing and investing in business outcomes rather than purchasing solutions, which is changing the context of IT spending.

“Changes in context challenge the relevance of technology solutions. Lower relevance reduces willingness to pay and renew relationships. Gartner sees relevance as the connection between a provider’s solution and how applicable it is to current customer needs. That connection exists at every level from the C-level to individual developers. Without relevance, we see sales cycles extend and renewals at greater risk,” said McDonald.

The dynamic context requires leaders to raise their relevance across three situations: the present, whenever context changes in the near term, and positioning solutions for future growth when economic conditions turn favorable in the next economy.

“It is up to the provider to know when context changes and to rebuild context through refocusing messaging and repositioning to meet customers where they are,” said McDonald.

The sources for this piece include an article in Gartner.