market

A survey of the Center for european economic research (ZEW) in cooperation with Creditreform came to find that e-commerce is used rather for buying purposes than for sales. The survey concentrated on the association for sourcing of payment in advance.

Usually the term e-commerce refers to the selling and buying processes that are conducted via the internet.

The imbalance of selling and buying processes is especially apparent in the software and IT sector:

Nearly 64% of the companies working in the IT- and software sector say that they have ordered products and services on the internet last year. In contrast to that just 29% of these companies sold their products or services online. Mirna Sarbu, scientist at the ZEW announces: “The companies of the software- and IT-service branch are with 81% leading in buying via the internet.”

Considering the usage of e-commerce for selling products, providers of telecommunication services are leading. Nearly 58% of these corporations offer opportunities for their customers to buy their products online.

Generally the e-commerce processes peaked out in 2010. Market-leading companies like amazon, facebook, google or ebay as well as younger online-shops like zalando.de shape the online trading.

What experiences have you made regarding e-commerce? Feel free to leave a reply!

Based on: www.marktundmittelstand.de

According to the latest study of Lünendonk the freelance IT business is booming.
But instead of IT departments, IT-experts are booked by buying departments more often.

The crisis is over. The German economy grew by an average of 3.7 percent in 2010. Even for projects that were suspended during the crisis money seems to flow again.

Just good news for IT freelancers: Internal IT departments are overstrained and companies are increasingly reliant on external support. Compared to 2009, the demand for IT professionals increased by 11.5 percent in 2010.

The development over the last 3 years:

Due to Lünendonk there were a high number of project requests in 2008. The crisis in 2009, made the number of project requests drop. However, in 2010 the industry experienced a boom of project requests for IT professionals again.
Until 2015, experts for the IT freelance market expect an equally high, annual market growth of over 17 percent! For 2015 until 2020 an average growth of about 14 percent per year is expected.

Three ordering fields: the IT areas, the buying departments and other specific departments

The purchasing department is not only discussing charges. Increasingly they are the ones who are contacting the recruitment agencies of freelancers directly: 33.5 percent of the project requests are already made directly by the purchasing department.
Next to the IT and the buying department the individual departments already rank third when it comes to booking IT freelancers – with 19.2 percent.

Of course we would like to hear your experiences. What was the most interesting department you have worked for?

The crisis in the IT market is overcome.
Furthermore German IT freelancers seem to be very satisfied with their order situation. The importance of the IT market in Germany is increasing further.
This is also fitting to the current market figures I would like to present you in below.

German IT service providers expect a market growth of up to 5% by the end of 2010.
A growth even stronger is expected for the following years. The further distant the future, the better are the prospects for the German IT market.

Market Research Company and consultancy Lünendonk surveyed an explorative group of German suppliers and received mostly positive responses concerning the IT market development:
For the rest of 2010 eight out of ten respondents anticipate a maximum market growth of five percent, whereas not one of the respondents expects losses for the remaining year.

The expectations from 2010 to 2015 are even better.
Good two-thirds (64%) of the respondents expect an increase of 1-5%. The remaining 34% expect an even higher growth, so the average agrees on 5.7%.

Lünendonk indicates the current market volume of € 17.3 billion. In comparison to 2008, it is a growth of 2%. (These figures are based on information provided by the industry association Bitkom and the European Information Technology Observatory (EITO).

What are your impressions – Have we left the crisis behind?
We are looking forward to your opinions.

Source: cio.de

After slightly descending project postings on projektwerk.de in May, the overall positive trend continues. In particular, the number of SAP projects hit a record high in June: figures mount up to 296 projects in 2010 compared to 110 projects in June 2009.

This growth is due to an unexpectedly strong business year for SAP – as the German software developer was able to increase it’s turnover considerably in the first quarter of 2010. This significant upward development can be attributed to the after-effects of the economic crisis, which drives many companies to restructure operations. This, in turn, leads to heavy investments in the IT sector.

However, not only SAP projects on projektwerk.de show an upward trend.

According to BITKOM, the German Association for Information Technology, the expectations concerning the tendency of the ICT sector’s financial situation rose by 71 percent in the second quarter of 2010.

“The BITKOM-industry is expecting further growth”, says BITKOM chairman Scheer. This is partly due to the necessity of upgrading such infrastructures as electricity supply, government agency networks, and the educational system. Nevertheless, such improvements are only manageable with sufficient specialists available to get the work done. As part of this development, the demand for IT-professionals and freelancers will increase significantly. According to BITKOM there are about 20,000 vacant positions in the ICT sector – every third company listed in the BITKOM Index is complaining about a lack of experts, negatively affecting their performance and business development.

Managing Director of projektwerk GmbH, Dr. Christiane Strasse, sees significant advantages for IT freelancers: “Based on our figures, we can say with certainty that the recovery of the IT market will further continue as more investments will be made. Another important factor is the lack of experts. However, this deficiency can be optimally offset by utilizing freelancers.”

“the new york times recently explored trends in the technology jobs market and suggets that significant opportunities only reveal themselves when examining both the available jobs and the underlying trends in demand for skills…”

…read the full article here.