Our ultimate goal at StackPlan is to help create more thriving businesses. In a recent marketing survey of 1,500 businesses, we found that only 32% of businesses are using the most important coaches: technology, finance, and technology contributing to the stark situation that only 6% of businesses were thriving, 35% were struggling, and 59% were somewhere in between.
These numbers are disappointing and show us there is substantial room for improvement. But we wanted to dig a little deeper into the reasons behind these figures.
So, we looked at how each business engaged with software implementation consultants, and as expected, the thriving businesses were the ones benefiting from the expertise of external coaches.
In today’s market of rapidly shifting technology, AI developments, and ERP software advances, it’s easy to see why businesses need the expertise of software consultants. To thrive and remain competitive, businesses must focus on improving their products and services, and the only way to do that is to streamline systems and improve the customer and employee experience.
The problem is there aren’t enough experienced, skilled software implementation consultants to help enough businesses thrive.
Let’s do a little bit of back-of-the-envelope math to look at the numbers. In the US, UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, there are just under 2 million businesses with 5 to 200 employees that sell, make, or distribute products.
From the table above, we can see that 47% of businesses engaged with a software coach last year – that’s about 940,000 businesses.
But if all businesses wanted to start thriving and hired a tech coach, that would be 1.2 million businesses in need of software implementation services (a 28% increase).
We interviewed almost 1,000 software consulting firms, and less than 10% are able (or willing) to increase their consulting delivery capacity by over 20% per year.
Here is our fundamental challenge and the fourth pillar of our manifesto: we need higher coaching capacity.
Here at StackPlan, we connect businesses with the right software consultants for their implementation needs. We’re on a mission to achieve at least 100K digital software system makeovers to help more businesses thrive.
By connecting the right coaches with the right businesses, we hope to help close this skill gap and encourage more talented software experts into the consulting field.
Check out StackPlan’s directory today and get connected to the best team of software coaches for your business needs.
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