Industry executives and experts share their predictions for 2023. Read them in this 15th annual VMblog.com series exclusive.
Shrinking IT Budgets and Preserving Customer Loyalty - Preparing for The Year Ahead
By Paddy Srinivasan, CEO of GoTo
As we head into a new year, businesses are preparing to face worsening
economic conditions, meaning they must think fast to devise a well-thought-out
plan and consider steps which will condense budgets while still preserving
customer loyalty. While IT will remain an area of prioritized spend, it is critical
that leaders identify the
areas of their IT budget that are essential, and those that are not. This
can certainly be challenging and tedious, but as we head into 2023, businesses
should consider what they can do to encourage more effective utilization of their
budget and resources.
Consolidation
Will Be Key for IT Teams to Achieve More with Shrinking Budgets
Gartner
projects that 2023 IT spending will only grow by 3%, down from a 10% growth
rate the year before. With anxieties high over an anticipated economic recession, the name of the
game for IT departments in 2023
will be consolidation. Solution
providers are often the first place where businesses look to cut budgets, but
by consolidating their vendors and tech solutions, IT teams can cut these costs and simplify billing while simultaneously
streamlining workflows and
interoperability between the tools they need. Fewer vendors mean fewer bills to pay,
and a unified tech stack ensures that team members do not waste time and resources jumping between multiple applications for different
tasks. In short, consolidation will allow IT teams to do more
with less as budgets continue to tighten in the coming year.
Preserving Customer Loyalty Without Cutting
Technology Corners
Companies are
reevaluating their priorities for the year ahead, and cost savings will no
longer be enough to keep their business. At a time of uncertainty, businesses
need to provide extra reassurance and show they are willing to go the extra
mile to connect with customers wherever they are - whether that's on the phone,
web, or mobile experience. Customer service will be the make-or-break factor
that preserves relationships and loyalty, and it needs to be simple, pleasant,
and accessible from anywhere. This applies to both B2B customer relationships
and B2C customer relationships. In fact, recent studies from Salesforce show that increasing your customer retention by just 2%
is equal to cutting costs by 10%.
Customer service
is not the place to make significant technology cutbacks because it can
preserve customers relationships and strengthen loyalty. A unified and
consolidated tech stack should still support foundational aspects of the
business that can help it survive and grow during uncertain economic times. That
means companies need to invest now in tools like unified contact center
solutions to ensure they are ready to meet new customer engagement demands in
2023.
This coming year will certainly be different, but through
these challenges and testing times opportunities will arise for businesses to
refine and re-evaluate the ways in which they are investing their technology,
resources, and interactions with customers. The businesses that rise to the
challenge by prioritizing their IT needs and customer relationships will have the
best chance at coming out on top in 2023 and beyond.
##
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Paddy Srinivasan is GoTo's Chief Executive Officer. During his eight
years at the company, he's also served as Chief Product & Technology
Officer and Senior Vice President and General Manager for the company's
Customer Engagement and Support Business and VP Products & Engineering for
Xively (Acquired by Google). Outside of his time at GoTo, Paddy recently served
as General Manager for Machine Learning Data Services for Alexa AI at Amazon.
He also founded Opstera, a Cloud Monitoring & Management start-up that was
acquired by a Microsoft subsidiary in 2012. Before that, Paddy held various
product and engineering leadership positions at Oracle and Microsoft.