Business and operating environment

Solteq primarily operates with selected solutions in chosen sectors of the Nordic IT services and software market. The markets offer good prospects for positive business development – despite the general uncertainty created by the COVID-19 pandemic. A market research company IDC forecasts that companies are on their way to meet their ‘digital destiny’. IDC estimates that 65 percent of global GDP will be digitized by 2022, as most products and services are based on a delivery model or require digital augmentation to remain competitive. IDC forecasts that global IT spending will reach 6,800 billion dollars by 2023.

The digital services and software products provided by the company comprehensively cover trends that are expected to strengthen in the future. According to a recent report by Gartner, IT decision-makers in the Nordics are expected to increase their investments during 2021 particularly in terms of data utilization, cloud technology, the development of digital business, process automation, artificial intelligence, and machine learning.

Solteq offers industry-specific solutions for trade, manufacturing industry, car retail, utilities sector, hotel and restaurant business, and public sector. The company has a significant competitive edge based on long-term experience of the industry-specific needs. Demand continues to grow in these sectors for solutions that digitalize core operations and make use of artificial intelligence, data, automation and seamless omnichannel systems. The negative impact of the COVID-19 pandemic is expected to occur during the first half of the year, affecting customer projects in the travel, restaurant, and leisure sectors.

The digitalizing energy sector is one of the company’s key drivers for growth in the Nordics. Demand for digital expert services and solutions is being increased by statutory obligations to renew data systems. Gartner forecasts that short-term IT investments will grow by 4.8 percent in the Utilities sector in Western Europe. Solteq specializes in software and IT services in the industry, which has quickly raised the company into a strong market position. Solteq has also expanded its Utilities sector operations to Sweden, where the energy sector is awaiting the development and confirmation of a more detailed timetable for a centralized information-exchange system project, similar to Datahub in Finland.

The company will continue to invest in its own product development, in which the autonomous robotics solutions for retail trade and indoor logistics play a key role. Gartner predicts that autonomous solutions will soon become more common in a wide range of industries. The market research company forecasts growing use of autonomous robotics in US retail stores, from the current level of around one percent to 60 percent by 2025. Research company ROBO Global expects fast adoption of autonomous robotics solutions by logistics and warehouse centers due to the transformation of delivery chains and the rapid growth in online shopping. Solutions making use of automation and robotics are also expected to become more common in construction as well: Research and consulting company MarketsandMarkets expects demand to increase at an annual rate of 10 percent, while investments will reach USD 121.5 billion by 2024.

IT sector players are expected to provide more agile and scalable delivery models. Solteq meets expectations with an organization that makes use of agile methods and by focusing on the as-a-Service (aaS) model and its own software products.