Mycustomer.com quoted Gartner today, saying that “customer relationship management is too strategically important for enterprises to abandon projects in the recession. As the recession deepens, however, enterprises are looking to drive greater efficiency and lower the costs of their CRM projects.

“Gartner estimates that CRM spending in 2009 will not decline as dramatically as it did after 2000, but growth will be more moderate than in previous years. It forecasts that the European CRM software market will reach $3.5 billion (€2.4billion) in 2009, an increase of 4% from 2008.

“When placed in the context of ongoing negative growth in the UK economy, which many predict will last until Q3 2009 or beyond, those are impressive figures.” See the whole mycustomer article here.

CIO Magazine’s article yesterday on whether IT can help retailers survive 2009 and thrive in 2010 pulls together its own research with that of Forrester, AMR, Northeastern University and Retail Systems.

It concludes that retailers should be using the current climate to challenge the status quo and make changes that can impact the bottom line within 12 months. CIO Magazine says that chief execs are asking IT to contribute to customer acquisition, customer retention and to drive innovative offerings. The article suggests that retailers are, or should be, focusing spend on 5 areas that can meet this brief:

• merchandise assortment and space planning, allocation and optimisation;
• regular price, promotion and markdown optimisation;
• instore systems such as point of sale, kiosks and mobile technologies aimed at improving the customer experience;
• cross-channel merchandising that improves channel visibility and connectivity and;
•  business intelligence that facilitates action.

This photo was taken in Asda Walmart in Swindon on Saturday. This is about 1/3 of the checkout queues that stretched up and down the front of the store. As the man behind me in the queue commented “I’ve never seen it like this, not even at Christmas”. He’d driven nearly an hour to get to the store by the way.

If it’s indicative of Asda’s trade as a whole then it’s a very good reason to undertake sub-vertical targeting. “Retail” as a whole might be very challenging right now, but targeting the sub-verticals, the grocery and discounting areas, could prove very fruitful. 

Companies are increasingly turning to outsourcing in a recession, claimed IBM’s CFO Mark Loughridge, as the company unveiled 4th quarter results ahead of expectations (net income of $4.4bn on revenue of $27bn) on Tuesday.

UKHotViews said on Jan 21st that “Wipro sees 24% European growth” and on 19th December claimed that (as a bellwether of the outsourcing market) Accenture’s 6% revenue growth is “solid and encouraging” with outsourcing the best performer, up 7%. The report claims “outsourcing really is the place to be in a downturn – helping your customers to save money.”

In its report “What’s in store for outsourcing in 2009?” IT World quotes Gartner analyst Linda Cohen as saying “Whenever there’s a downturn people outsource more, not less. Organizations want to take costs out wherever they can.” However, the piece claims that outsourcing will increasingly flourish in a “different” way – with cost, consolidation and the ‘green’ing of industries being major factors. We think trust will be a major factor too.

Citi has just released a survey it carried out in Nov/Dec 08 on 2009 CIO budgets. The 200 CIOs (split between the U.S. and Europe) said that they expect budgets to fall for the first time in five years -  US CIOs are expecting IT budgets to fall 2.7 % in 2009, European CIOs are seeing decline of a more modest 1.9 %. Useful information on spending priorities (server consolidation, security) and possible areas of cutback are also covered.

CIO’s list of the top 100 IT spenders in the UK is now available here http://www.cio.co.uk/cio100/companies/.

Some of the more detailed company profiles have useful intel on their operations and infrastructure (hardware, software, Database, BI etc), plus good soundbites from CIOs. Brilliant stuff for key account planning and account based marketing.

The Sunday Times featured this article on the formation of smart meter bidding consortiums.

The government wants every home to have a smart meter by 2010 (which wil monitor electricity use digitally, as well as allow two-way communication between supplier and home) and the Sunday Times claims that O2, Vodafone, BT, Logica, Accenture and Capgemini are all limbering up.

Ofgem is likely to run the tender, claims the paper, with the contract running from 2010 to 2020.

McKinsey has just published its “Industry trends in the downturn” snapshot, covering predictions for consumer goods, chemicals, technology and steel industries.

The outlook for consumer goods is mixed, based on the fact that consumers change their habits and priorities in a recession, rather than making general cuts, McKinsey argues. The key is therefore understanding any category’s likely performance.

The report believes that technology will fare broadly better than in 2001 because IT is already managed more effectively and spending is, if anything, behind the 10 year average.

The chemicals prediction is focused on geographic moves; the report highlighting that lower cost Chinese and Middle Eastern players could supplant higher cost, established businesses.

McKinsey predicts that the steel industry is likely to recover, evidencing the infrastructure growth in India, China and the Middle East.

McKinsey requires registration (free) for this article.

I’d highly recommend reading this superb FT article which analyses the year to come from a CIO perspective. In particular, this quote from Ian Campbell, of British Energy and chairman of the UK-based Corporate IT Forum, is really enlightening.

He says his priorities are: “first, year-on-year savings on business-as-usual expenditure – “The more companies just ask for a ‘flat’ 10 per cent across all areas, you know there is a general squeeze,” he says.

“Second, he says, are service efficiencies which demonstrate IT is providing exceptional value for money, and third, continued outsourcing and “managed service” activity.

“He argues for the need to ensure there is no wasted investment or poor cost control: these will be far more noticeable in a downturn and quickly show up poor management.

“He says there is already a greater focus on return on investment, with payback expected even more quickly. Interest in “technology” projects such as Vista or Services Oriented Architecture has also dwindled. Software as a Service (SaaS) has its supporters but he adds: “There is little in the way of proper commercial offerings, so we have not seen many massive deals or a shift in the market.”

An enlightening podcast discussion on what effect the regulation of the financial services industry will have was released yesterday by Finextra, featuring a discussion between Michael Dawson of Promontory, (an ex-regulator himself) and Keith Saxton, Global Director of Financial Markets of IBM.

Here are some of the highlights and our conclusions on them:

• Management information systems available to regulators and firms are not robust enough to cope with increased demands. It’s still too hard to measure risk horizontally and technology is being looked at now to help cope with this
• There was a clear identification of regulators as opportunities – especially a potential “uber-regulator” – maybe the IMF, to look at systematic risk across financial markets
• The commentators said that there was a significant data issue – that FS companies needed to build effective models of liquidity risk, and technology was urgently needed to help solve this issue
• The desire for greater transparency is becoming more real, there’s more commitment to it. First stop will be governments opening up their “national darlings” to regulators. There was a view that only technology could help FS companies manage the huge number of compliance obligations in the future.
• Regulators are keeping a sharp eye out for banks “going too fast, taking on too much risk, banks who might need to slow down” – the banks that do well out of the turmoil will need the systems and processes in place to prove that they can chew what they bite off.