The revenues of companies listed in the main category of the Deloitte Technology Fast 50 ranking have increased almost six-fold. The ranking covers the fastest growing technology companies in Central Europe. The first place goes to the Czech software company Simplity, followed by the Polish firm Sky Cash and the Hungarian online real estate company Szallas.hu in third place. The average revenue growth rate in the category was as high as 560 percent (revenue in 2014 compared to 2011) but that was still lower than last year’s figure (698 percent) and the results of previous years.
“Technologically innovative companies are far from achieving the kind of results recorded several years ago, when the average increase in the winners’ revenues exceeded one thousand percent. In the 2012 edition the average revenue growth reached 1026 percent! At the same time, despite this decline, the revenue growth rates that these companies have achieved are still significant and incomparably higher than those recorded by companies specialising in other areas. We can see from this that it is worth investing in technology, and innovative thinking is the path to rapid development,” says Magdalena Burnat Mikosz, partner at Deloitte heading the Innovation Consulting and R&D and Government Incentives teams.
According to the CEO survey done by Deloitte almost half of them wants to expand into new markets in 2016. Many Fast 50 companies are entering the stage of development when their home market is maturing and they need a new pool of customers to grow. 23,7 per cent of CEOs are satisfied with the level of diversification of products or services but the development of existing products is for them the fourth most important future growth factor.
The winner of the Deloitte Technology Fast 50 was the Czech software company Simplity, which ranked sixth in the “Rising Stars” sub-category in 2014. There were as many as 38 companies which entered the main ranking of the Deloitte Technology Fast 50 for the first time. Three moved up the ranking and eight moved down, while one occupied the same place as last year.
The Fast 50 companies operate in competitive industries thus innovation is a day-to-day reality and the biggest challenge. 68.4 per cent of CEOs surveyed by Deloitte place it among the top three challenges they face. Innovation as a creative process is a challenge that can only be resolved by the skills, knowledge and imagination of the workforce. This is why talent management, selected by 52.6 per cent of respondents, is an important success factor. Over 60 per cent of CEOs selected high-quality employees as the key driver of growth, significantly ahead of strong leadership (44.7 per cent) which is in second place.
In the latest ranking areas in which applicant companies could conduct business has changed. The new segments include software, computer hardware, communication, media, clean technologies and life sciences with biotechnology, the pharmaceutical industry and medical technology. The main Technology Fast 50 ranking was dominated by software companies, which accounted for over half of all the companies in the ranking.
The ranking has two subcategories, the “Rising Stars” and the “Big Five”. The first could be called the Polish category: as many as 7 of the 12 places in the ranking went to Polish companies. The leader was Code Wise, a Polish company established in 2011, which achieved a revenue growth rate of 4555 per cent.
“The latest Rising Stars ranking shows that companies growing the fastest at the moment are those that are rolling out new innovations in software exploiting Big Data analysis and the possibilities of mobile devices,” concluded Magdalena Burnat-Mikosz.
The report is available at www.deloitte.com/fast50ce.