Globally, manufacturing business growth has increased by 3.7 per cent despite the fact that half of manufacturers admit they have grown under challenging circumstances, said Epicor Software Corporation in a new study.

The annual Global Growth Index launched by the global provider of industry-specific enterprise software is designed to measure the state of business growth worldwide, by tracking the performance of manufacturing businesses in 14 territories.

Taking last year’s results as a base figure (100), it has found that business growth across the globe has increased by 3.7index points in the last 12 months, awarding the state of business growth with a score of 103.7.

Contributing to this score is a significant growth in the number of manufacturers reporting strong sales/turnover in the last 12 months—up 5 per cent from last year to 70 per cent overall. A similar trend was observed with profits and product ranges, with a 3 per cent boost in the number of businesses growing in each of these areas compared to last year.

Despite this worldwide increase in business growth performance, almost half (45 per cent) of businesses also admitted that the growth they had experienced in the last 12 months had been challenging and one-in-four (23 per cent) said it had been stressful. However, half (46 per cent) of businesses globally also agree that investing in new/better technology is a strategy that will help them overcome their growing pains.  

“Although we have seen impressive overall rates of growth this year, there’s an underlying consensus among the businesses we surveyed, that growth hasn’t been easy to achieve,” said Scott Hays, senior vice president, product marketing, for Epicor.

“Nevertheless, businesses in the manufacturing sector have also affirmed that investing in the right technology will help position themselves for growth in the future. With automated systems reaching production lines around the world, cloud adoption continuing to rise, and enterprise resourcing planning (ERP) solutions transforming the way businesses manage workflows and share their data, this is a sentiment that we will track year-on-year,” he concluded. – TradeArabia News Service