The Confederation of British Industry have released a fascinating news release, speculating that the recession may be the catalyst for a new era in business.

“The business environment of the next decade will be significantly different to what might have been expected just two years ago. The financial crisis
and the recession that has followed have altered operating conditions by imposing new challenges and exacerbating existing ones. Businesses will respond across the organisation, moving to a more flexible, collaborative and leaner model.”

The report identifies four areas where fresh approaches will develop:

- alternatives to debt-driven growth

- critical scrutiny of relationships with partners and even competitors

- sustainability and ethics to become more integrated into the business model

- a more flexible workforce will evolve; assisted by developments in technology and training.

If correct, this may genuinely be the start of a new approach to business that goes far beyond the UK borders. A new approach that may involve lower short-term returns but greater stability.

Time will tell if we’ve truly learnt our lesson from this recession.

The shape of business – the next ten years

It depends who you ask, what you read and where you look.

It does appear that we’re past the worst of it, but it will be a long time before the recession is well and truly behind us.

Everything has changed. Even if most people don’t yet realise it.

And guess what? More change lies ahead.

In the same way that every recession has demonstrated different patterns and trends, so too have the recoveries.

One thing is for certain. A lot of people are breathing sighs of relief. And a lot of people are starting to spend money again.

You may have missed the chance to take advantage of the recession’s opportunities. But now is the time to take advantage of the recovery’s opportunities.

Tap into the recovery.

A snapshot from this morning’s BBC News Business page:

Over to the banks.

The BBC News website is tentatively reporting that the recession may be over:

“Confidence among business professionals has surged, suggesting the recession is at an end, a survey has said.

The Institute of Chartered Accountants’ index of business confidence rose to 4.8 at the end of June, from -28.2 in March, the biggest rise for two years.”

This follows reports Japan, Germany and France have officially left recession, and the US economy may also be recovering.

Question: What usually follows a transition from little to plenty?

Indulgence.

Nothing tastes quite as good as the first dessert to celebrate the end of a diet, the first mouthful after a fast, or the first meal out after a year of eating in.

Little is as appreciated as the first treat or luxury after many months of frugality.

Are you poised to be noticed when the money starts trickling back into the budgets?

Now is a great time to be seen.

At this year’s Software Industry Conference, myself and Sharon Housley (NotePage, Inc.) co-presented a session on Marketing in a Recession.

The session went well, yet the feedback we received was fascinating. It turned out that most of the people who attended the talk believed that the worst of the recession was now behind us, and that we had taken our first steps on the road to recovery.

The question is to what extent this was influenced by the people who were attending the session. On one hand you might argue that the people attending such a conference were at the very least coping reasonably well with the recession. On the other hand you might believe that the presentation itself was more likely to attract people whose businesses were struggling.

A quick glance at the BBC website’s Business section shows some encouraging signs, despite the BBC’s permanent state of doom and gloom:

Sharp jump in US new home sales

Deutsche Bank sees profits rise

Updated: First 2009 rise for house prices

So are we now past the worst?

I’d love to share my personal prediction, but with only a 50% chance of being correct, I’ll hold back for now. But as pointed out during my talk, a year ago many were fearing the worst and calculating how long they could survive with no income at all. Today there seems to be more caution, less fear.

According to a recently released report by the Business Software Alliance, worldwide software piracy rose from 38% to 41% in 2008 (meaning that 41% of all software in use is pirated).

This is the second year in a row that software piracy has increased.

Although some progress in combating global software piracy has been made, those gains were negated by a large increase in the number of PCs in high-piracy countries such as China and India.

The scale of the software piracy problem is evident when the total monetary value of unlicensed software is examined.  In 2008, the global software market accounted for approximately $88 billion in revenue, compared with $50.2 billion in losses due to piracy.

Although the United States has the world’s lowest rate of software piracy, it accounts for the largest losses in terms of dollar amount, $9.1 billion, because it is the world’s largest software market.

According to the study:

• The lowest-piracy countries are the United States, Japan, New Zealand, and Luxembourg, all near 20%.
• The highest-piracy countries are Armenia, Bangladesh, Georgia, and Zimbabwe, all over 90%.
• The lowest regions are North America (21%) and the European Union (35%).
• The highest-piracy regions are Central/Eastern Europe (67%) and Latin America (65%).

The BSA study also found that software piracy’s negative impact reaches far beyond the software industry as it has been shown to lower revenues and eliminate  jobs for local IT providers, increase cyber crime and reduce tax revenues.

Google Labs have launched two new experimental products that actually have the potential to change the way we search for news and pictures.

Google News Timeline “allows users to view news, scanned newspapers and magazines, blog posts, sports scores, and more on a zoomable, graphical timeline”, while Similar Images “helps you narrow your search by finding images that are visually similar to an existing result”.

This comes at the same time that Google have announced strong results for Q1.

On Wednesday I wrote a post entitled Doom and gloom? Share your views! I was pleased to get an interesting mix of comments, and a few people emailed me as they wished to remain anonymous.

The results weren’t quite what I expected, and I’ve tried to roughly group them into categories.

45% of you felt positive about what’s happening.

25% were more or less neutral; things weren’t great but you were getting along.

30% were concerned, struggling or in trouble.

Note that the data sample was very small – there were 16 comments on the blog and four emails. Thank-you to all who responded for giving me such a nice round figure to work with – perfect for a Friday morning. But let’s assume that this is more or less representative, at least for the purpose of this blog entry.

My original post mentioned that I was fed up with all the doom and gloom, so I was pleasantly surprised that 45% of the feedback was positive.

A number of you have been positively affected by the increase in the US Dollar exchange rate, but this raises the interesting question of how current sales compare with sales before the Dollar started falling?

But the best news of all came through email. Four companies wrote to let me know that their sales are great right now. Better still, two of them have seen record months since the start of the year, and one of them missed beating their previous record by a whisker! Note that two out of the four are clients of SoftwarePromotions – thereby proving that 50% of all successful software companies work with our company. Right?

Our company’s experience has been that consumer products are more likely to struggle right now, yet a number of respondents have seen the exact opposite.

So what conclusions can we draw from all of this?

The first and most obvious point is that it’s not all doom and gloom at all. Forget the precise economic semantics; things have been bad for some time now. And while there are plenty of individuals and businesses suffering great hardships, plenty are surviving, plenty are doing quite well, and some are even thriving.

Secondly, the ramifications of the recession are complex. People and businesses are in theory spending less money, but why are the shopping malls as busy as ever during the weekends, and why are some companies (10% of the respondents!) thriving during these difficult times? Remember that a recession is a vague term, and contrary to what you might read in the news, each recession is different.

None of us know what lies ahead. We can only prepare to the best of our abilities. But there’s never been a more important time to be seen.

I have a close friend who owns a small company which produces and sells several speciality men’s clothing items.  For the past year, with a little help from yours truly, my friend has managed a successful AdWords account advertising his products.

I was recently talking with this friend and he was bemoaning the fact that his total number of sales last month were the same as they were six months ago, and he felt like AdWords was failing him.

My first thought was, “Are you crazy?”

In the economic climate of the past six months, his ability to maintain a consistent level of sales and income should be seen as just short of a miracle. I suggested that he takes a closer look at his web logs, as he would very likely find that without his AdWords efforts, many of his sales would never have occurred.

In the current economic environment, AdWords performance should be measured a little differently. These days it is simply not reasonable to expect tremendous gains in conversions and sales.

If over the past 6-12 months your sales resulting from AdWords have stayed the same, or even dropped off just a little, you could view that as a success. It’s tough out there.

Ah the joys of living in a recession!

I got fed up with all the doom and gloom on Radio 4, so switched to Radio 5. This proved to be a slightly faster and more dynamic form of the same misery.

Switching off the Radio, I headed for the BBC’s Business pages:

“Unemployment passes two million”

“Uk recession ‘will last longest’” (Does that mean we win?)

“Economic woes hit Dubai ratings”

“Downturn ‘risks Africa conflict‘

I know there’s a lot of hardship and suffering going on out there, but is it all doom and gloom?

How’s the downturn affecting your business? Please share your thoughts and views in our comments below.