Channel fears sluggish economy - CRN poll

Australian channel businesses feel the slowing economy represents the biggest challenge to their businesses in 2020.

That’s one finding from CRN’s regular reader poll, which we ran over the holiday period and asked “What will be your biggest business challenge for 2020?”.

We offered the following five options to our readers:

Slow economic growth and its impact on customers
Transitioning to an MSP model
Finding and retaining skilled staff
Finding time to work ON the business as well as IN it
No challenge: 2020 will be non-stop unicorns, rainbows and fun!

And here’s how you 88 of you voted.

CRN is impressed that 13 percent of respondents see no challenges on the horizon. Our team was also pleasantly surprised that only 11 percent feel that transitioning to MSP will be tough, although we are not sure if that’s because most of you are already there, or many of you aren’t making the attempt.

We weren’t surprised that 23 percent of you worry it will be hard to work on your business as well as in it – this is a perennial puzzler for small business operators.

That almost 30 percent worry that the economy will impact on business is not surprising, given Australia’s slow growth rate and likely further drag due to bushfire recovery. But buck up, folks – CRN’s Fast 50 for 2019 shows that channel businesses can vastly out-pace growth in the wider economy!

To riff on how CRN readers plan to grow in 2020, we’ve made our next poll about the marketing tactics you plan to deploy this year.

The poll is here and your options are: