Duba like the rest of the world has faced a lot of economic uncertainty over recent years.
This week has seen a lot of conflicting news – oil prices remain volatile, the political situation in Egypt, Yemen, Syria, Tunisia, Iraq, Afghanistan, iran, Libya… is at best uncertain – talks in Israel, and even unrest in Turkey and rumours of another Greek bail out, all undermine confidence. The economic data from Europe, USA and China is micro analysed daily and stock markets react nervously. Dubai’s DFM while still comfortably more than 50% ahead ths year hit its higheest level this week and then had the biggest 1 day drop since 2009. Other regional markets were similarly impacted.
India’s rapdily deteriorating exchange rate is also a cause for uncertainty, while gold prices have been extra volatile.
The recent chamber of Commerce feedback survey from business leaders contained some mixed signals
Expectation for positive business conditions for the 3rd quarter of 2013 have dropped by 23% from the previous quarter (Q2-2013)but continue to be positive at 22% optimistic, and higher than the 9% for
the same quarter in the previous year (Q3-2012).
Business confidence for the 3rd quarter of 2013 likewise continued to be positive at
28%, down from 45% for the previous quarter (Q2-2013) but higher than the 15% for the same quarter in the previous year (Q3-2012).
So its better than last year but not as good as we expected last quarter.
The UAE reportedly saw a 30 per cent decline in the number of job vacancies posted online in the last twelve months based on the Monster Employment Index.
Across the region, there was a nine percent drop in total listings, with the UAE showing the steepest decline and a 30 percent slump in jobs on offer.the overlal numebrs were better than they might otherwise have been because they were boosted by suprisingly high increases in job advertisements in Egypt
Hospitality sector surprisingly saw a 16% drop in vacancies.
Globally the IT sector where we operate is showing similar reductions in vacancies and salaries little changed since 2009 much as Dubai. U.K suveys for example show Dynamics Ax vancies dropping from 200 two years go, to 100 last year and 80 over the last 12 months- which perhaps reflects less job hopping and job insecurity as much as reduced growth.
Synergy continues to take the rough with the smooth -and sticks to its risk averse approach, and balanced growth. As the local market matures and start up companies grow, and technologies change, so we fine tune our offerings. For example we see increasing demand for dashboards and BI, for Corporate performance management, for audits and correction of failed projects, and a slow increase in interest in cloud based applications, and mobility and asset management. After the WPS surge demand for payroll has eased back. CRM seems to be the must have solution this year and we have completed successful projects for several major clients. Dynamics Ax erp continues to grow with the significant enhancements included in recent releases and we have 6 projects running. This includes buidling a complete Admission system for a major UK Public school in this region.
Infor Sunsystems, for which perhaps Synergy is best known in the region, is stil the number one choice of many clients for an easy to use, powerful multi company finance system, enhanced by the power of Vision (Q@A) reporting.
New solutions include : Financial audit software for auditors, Banking complience reporting software. mobile device management.
Some major product advances imminent include Dynamics CRM 2013, Prophix 11, BI4Dynamics Ax.
It is gratifying to receive so many wonderful testimonials from satisfied customers across all our solutions for successful projects and outstanding customer support..
In September we will be holding some seminars at Microsoft offices (Banking compliance reporting ) and BI4 Dynamics (NAV and Ax) – watch this blog for more details on both. we are also preparing for Gitex- this year with two stands. We look forward to meeting you.
