The companies included in this year’s Smart50 are at the forefront of some rapidly changing industries. Whether it’s information technology, finance or transportation, there is no doubt these businesses are being forced to adapt as their industries evolve.
While some businesses are experiencing smaller changes, such as SEO firms Switched On Media and eWeb Marketing facing plenty of new competitors, others are being affected by huge, structural changes in the economy.
IF Telecom says the introduction of the National Broadband Network will force the company to consolidate some of its user base, while SELMAR Institute of Education is having to adapt to more regulation and fluctuating immigration numbers.
But it’s the mark of a smart company that can adapt to changing political, social and economic environments. Here are some of the ways the industries of our Smart50 are changing, and how they are learning to adapt.
The recruitment sector struggled during the financial crisis, and many SMEs are hurting as employers become hesitant to hire again. Recruiters in our Smart50 are adopting new technologies and focusing on niches to compete against a wave of new entrants,
“Our particular markets used to be dominated by a select few established recruitment consultancies. Relatively low startup costs and barriers to entry have invited smaller start-up businesses to try their hand in recruitment.”
– Matthew Sampson and Adam Brown, Aspect Personnel
“Social media has transformed the recruitment industry. There is more information online than ever before. The role of a recruiter will become even more important – anyone can source a name of a person on LinkedIn or Facebook, but it is those that are not only able to source people but actually engage and recruit people that will be the winners.”
– Matt Trustum and Dudely Levell, FineRecruit
Search engine marketing companies are a dime a dozen, but only the best can deliver quality results. Our Smart50 entrants in the SEO category are running ahead of the pack by teaching SMEs how to compete on social media.
“A couple of years ago, we spent a lot of time explaining to a lot of people what social media even is. Now, everyone knows what it is and the major interest around social media is to do with measurement and ROI.
“The growth in mobile is also overwhelming. There has been a 3000% increase in Australian mobile internet usage in the last three years, and Google predicts that more internet searches will be done on mobiles than desktops by 2013.”
– Scot Ennis and Andy Jamieson, Switched on Media
“A trend we’ve been aware of for some time is the increasing importance of social media in growing businesses online – some businesses even forego traditional websites and market themselves online using only Facebook. We predict the rise of social media for business will continue exponentially.”
– Gary Ng, eWeb Marketing
As employers step back from hiring, many are pumping funds into training their existing staff. But education providers are also having to deal with flcutating immigration numbers, and more regulation.
“There are many new entrants into the market resulting in greater competition for funding and new business. Service, quality and differentiation is now becoming the biggest challenge.
“The industry is also becoming a lot more heavily regulated.”
– Marcus Sellen, SELMAR Institute of Education
“Industry standards are always moving – without a formal qualificaiton now it is near impossible to gain employment.”
– Carol Campbell, Nepean Industry Edge Training
It’s been a shocking year for retail. With SMEs barely able to discount any further, many are falling under while others struggle to bring customers through the door. Our Smart50 are adopting new methods of selling to combat the downturn.
“Consumers are now searching for value and are more educated with their purchasing decisions due to the accessibility of information when researching on the internet. Technology has become a driving force in retail and if not embraced, will be the demise of archaic business models.”
– Neil Singh and Candida Stephens, Fidarsi
“The furniture industry is changing in that more and more shoppers are going online to purchase. Five years ago people were a little skeptical to purchase furniture online, but not anymore.”
– Dean Ramler, Milan Direct
The next few years will see some big changes in the telco indsutry, from the separation of Telstra to the continued adoption of wireless technologies. Our Smart50 entrants are preparing for the constructoin of the National Broadband Network, and what that will mean for their customers.
“With the imminent introduction of the NBN there is a growing emphasis on consolidating your ADSL base. As such we have exercised an aggressive growth policy and have bought out a number of small ISP bases. There is also a predicted movement towards cloud hosted telephony and computing.”
– Andrew and Richard Branson, IF Telecom
“We have the NBN starting to take shape, which will see consolidation of suppliers and increased capacity of target customers. At the same time, the pricing models are forever changing, under the regulatory scrutiny. Just consider the phase out of the terms ‘caps’ and ‘unlimited.’”
– Geoff Neate, Joe Tigel and Mike Allen, Spirit Telecom
Information technology players have been some of the biggest winners over the past few years, and grwoth is continuing as more businesses adopt the next big thing – cloud computing.
“Where traditionally businesses were dependent on physical infrastructure (servers and the like), this is now changing as businesses adapt to the cloud. There is now an option to run businesses on virtual infrastructure hosted in data centers and accessible via the internet.
“No longer is there a need for large upfront capital expenditure.”
– Alfa Aminudin and Christopher Uchanski, Reseau
“The industry is a lot more competitive now than it used to be. A lot of companies seem to be popping up online selling really cheap products. There has been a definite shift in the quality of goods sold online in recent years.
“This is excpetionally hard to contend with becuase it tends to scare people away from purchasing online becuase of quality concerns.”
– Nicole Kersh. 4cabling
“The pace of technology change is challenging the market research industry. the industry needs to adapt and change to recognise more and more data is readily available. The challenge is using the data, interpreting it and making sense of it for clients.
“Competition is coming form outside the traditional players with new entrants coming in with completely different mindset and proposition.”
– Dianne Gardiner, Latitude Insights
“The need to place systems in the cloud is strong. For example, an ‘old school’ firm will have a PC based desktop database, then use paper timesheets, then manually process everything into MYOB. We are in the cloud and our clients use cloud-based data, like Salesforce, and the database seamlessly integrates.”
– Nicholas Beames, Astute People
The hospitality industry is tied to the fate of the tourism sector, and both have been hit by the higher dollar. But Smart50 players in the health food sector are benefiting from the consumer trend to eating well.
“We’ve noticed that there are very few new entrants in the food production industry. Farming mostly consists of generational businesses.”
– Jan Vyrdra and William Pham, Fresh Leaf Herbs
“Our industry is becoming more competitive with many of the smaller independant operators driving the the overall quality of coffee upwards.
“This is a very positive influence on the industry as consumers are more aware of what they want in the coffee.”
– Steven Ashworth and Richard Peil, Coffee Guru
The aging population and the consumer trend towards eating healthily are gold for the health and fitness sector, which is continuing to outperform others. However, a range of new competitors is making things tough.
“When I started the business my aged care facilities were fairly small – on average 30 beds – and were owned by smaller operators. Since then some very large companies have become involved in aged care and many of these smaller sites have been bought out.
“There’s been a considerable degree of consolidation within our sector and I think that will continue. I think these changes are being driven by seniors and baby boomers demanding higher living standards in their retirement and as a result the general environment within facilities has improved
significantly.”
– Damien James, Aged Foot Care
“Our industry is changing by the entry of more 24/7 operators. The industry now sees us operating in smaller spaces- where lower rents can assist with membership pricing.”
– Justin McDonnell & Jactina McDonnell-Jimenez, Anytime Fitness
The rising cost of fuel is making transport a tricky business, but some SMEs are finding a successful niche in outsourced training.
“Transport sector as a whole is growing, ‘big picture’ forecast of freight task doubling 2000-2020. Road transport workers are in short supply, as the workforce ages and the industry has difficulty attracting new entrants. Increased compliance obligations and new technology drive demand for training.”
– Peter, Meredith and Michael Simmons, Transport Training
“On a positive note, the big changes we’re seeing in the market is the emergence of systems thinking which Altus has led in the past few years.”
“Substantial ‘corporate’ level clients are now recognising that ‘sticker price’ or hourly rate is not the whole story to traffic management – back office efficiencies, reporting, and timely delivery are also part of the puzzle.”
– David Lundberg, Altus Traffic
Money is starting to flow again after the financial crisis, which is helping out many SMEs. But there’s a problem facing the Smart50 finance players – more small competitors wanting a piece of the action.
“A greater demand for short term finance options has seen a fluctuation of payday lenders enter the online market space over the last few years.”
– Greg Ellis and Sean Teahan, Cash Doctors
The web is cleaining up. As more consumers expect snazzy, fast websites with plenty of features including mobile versions, web design companies and marketplaces are performing better than ever.
“Businesses are constantly becoming better informed about the potential of their websites and the benefits of online marketing.
“Once upon time our sales pitch was all about why a business should invest dollars in the online space. Now the conversation is often about why they should choose us.”
– David and James Lawrence, and Garry Viner, The Web Showroom
“Domains are becoming websites. Ten years ago it was possible to be a domain investor and pick up great domain names for a song, selling them on for massive profits.
“These days that’s impossible, and sitting on domain names with automatic parking pages is much less lucrative than it once was.”
“We’re seeing a huge flood of domain investors looking to build out their portfolio and turn it into websites, and then to build real businesses behind the sites they’re building. This is a seismic shift in how the internet looks and feels.”
– Mark Harbottle and Matt Mickiewicz, Flippa
Patrick Stafford is a freelance journalist and a former deputy editor of SmartCompany.
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