Techaisle Blog

Focused on growth and committed to new solutions that expand business horizons – the SMB market is on the brink of a multi-year growth trajectory.

They are here - Techaisle's annual SMB, Core Midmarket and Upper Midmarket Top 10 IT Priorities, IT Challenges, and Business Issues infographics, 13th year of Techaisle tracking at a WW level, and is sought after by IT vendors, channel partners, and media. Techaisle surveyed nearly 5000 SMBs and Midmarket firms, quota sampled to ensure adequate coverage of four small businesses (1-9, 10-19, 20-49, and 50-99 employees), three core midmarket (100-249, 250-499, and 500-999 employees) and two upper midmarket (1000-2499, 2500-4999) segments. As a result, the data represents a robust and reliable sampling of the market segment for IT products and services.

Techaisle surveys thousands of small and midsized businesses (SMBs) to understand technology imperatives and directions. The annual survey establishes context by asking respondents to identify their top business goals, technology priorities, and IT challenges for the upcoming year.

Redefining the art of the possible

The SMB market is a study in contrasts: the tension between boundless aspiration and a constrained reality. However, data shows that a market that has mastered the cloud and is excited by AI will dedicate itself to growth in 2024.

Techaisle just released its latest channel partners trends research covering over 2000 partners. The first primary focus of Techaisle’s channel research focuses on issues that shape the actions of channel organizations: the strategic priorities of the executive team, revenue sources and changes, financial resources, and go-to-market considerations and investment priorities. Vendors who obtain a more profound understanding of the channel’s ‘inner workings’ are, Techaisle believes, better positioned to direct their own activities to address the most critical concerns of channel partners. In the post-pandemic macro-economic driven uncertainties, an unsettled supply chain, cloud-led transformation, ecosystem participation, and essentially undifferentiated vendor-partner programs, partners are seeking new vendor partner asks and newer engagement models.. 

Each year, Techaisle asks decision-makers in the channel to identify their top business issues and develops a ‘top 10’ ranking based on this information. This list serves as the industry standard for understanding the business issues that define actions, interests, and investments for the coming year.

The latest findings show that “managing uncertainty” is the top business issue cited by 45% of channel partners, up from 34% a year ago. “Driving growth,” identified by 43% of channel decision-makers as an essential priority for the next 12 months, is the #2 concern of channel executives – it was the top concern in 2022, 2021, and 2020.

Scanning the balance of the list, we see a central theme as per the survey of 2115 channel partners - issues relating to efficiency and control are becoming more important, while those relating to expansion are declining. Nearly half of the partners plan to focus on cross-selling/upselling to their existing customers over chasing new customer logos. Marketing is focusing on the “land” part of the sales process, and sales are increasing its focus on the “expand” part of “land and expand.”

They are here - Techaisle's annual SMB and Midmarket Top 10 IT Priorities, IT Challenges, and Business Issues infographics, 13th year of Techaisle tracking at a WW level, and is sought after by IT vendors, channel partners, and media. Techaisle surveyed over 5000 SMBs, quota sampled to ensure adequate coverage of four small businesses (1-9, 10-19, 20-49, and 50-99 employees), three midmarket (100-249, 250-499, and 500-999 employees) and two upper midmarket (1000-2499, 2500-4999) segments. As a result, the data represents a robust and reliable sampling of the market segment for IT products and services.

Significant changes in 2023 as compared to 2022 are:

• Driving innovation and managing uncertainty, absent in 2022, are among the top 10 business issues in 2023.
• Deploying customer experience solutions as an IT priority has moved to 4th place as compared to 9th in 2022. CCaaS is considered an integral component of customer experience solutions.
• Implementing employee experience platforms and 5G-enabled devices/applications are new IT priorities within the top 10 list. UCaaS is one of the technology areas being investigated by SMBs.
• Adopting collaboration technology solutions has move down from 3rd rank to 8th and hybrid workplace solutions as a priority ranks 10th as compared to 5th in 2022
• Budget constraint has been a constant IT challenge fixture for over a decade. For 2023, it has been replaced by cloud cost management. Cloud optimization and cost management are the top IT challenges for SMBs, Core-Midmarket, and Upper Midmarket firms.
• Preventing Cyberattacks, adopting Zero Trust, and moving to as-a-service technology acquisition for new IT challenges are among the top five.
• Sustainability is increasingly becoming relevant and essential for the SMB segment, and there is no surprise that it is among the top challenges.
• Integration, business process automation is now non-optional and a challenge, which is worsened because of the inability to find trained employees