Market Update 27th April 2020
Ever since the first lockdowns began in Europe last month, companies have been scrambling to organise themselves to deal with the sudden impact of home working. Now, almost six weeks on for many of us, since the beginning of this sudden logistical nightmare, we are all waking up to find that everything is beginning to settle down quite nicely, without any major catastrophes. Thanks to the high level of sophistication, quality leadership and flexible business practices in our market today, project life is rapidly returning to normal. The question now is; how do we proceed from here?
Background
One of the earliest indicators of impending headwinds in our market, is the demand in the flexible skills market. Freelance engineers (or contractors), are often some of the first expenses to be cut when the electronics market appears to be heading for a slump. Although there are no shortage of concerns with the current global health crisis, we are not seeing much ease in the demand for specialist freelance engineers in the Embedded Systems market. Medium and long-term sentiment remains positive and companies are starting to look for new opportunities amidst all the chaos in our new rapidly changing world.
So why is this?
Many of the new challenges delivered by this Covid-19 pandemic run in parallel with current innovation trends in our industry. You only have to look at advances in technologies like remote patient monitoring, robotics, industrial automation, 5G communication, AI and the entire IoT ecosystem, to realise that these solutions are going to be needed more than ever now, for us to adapt to our new real-world norms. Demand for specialist freelance engineers remains high with severe skill shortages continuing to be one of the biggest headaches for project managers trying to deliver advanced embedded systems R&D projects.
Winners and losers
As always, the most dynamic ambitious companies will embrace these sudden dramatic changes and as we all know; ‘disruption = opportunity’, when you have the right mindset. Companies aiming to just ‘hang tight’ to see what happens, will be left behind and other more ambitious firms will emerge as the new big winners, as the dust begins to settle. One of the biggest challenges facing R&D Managers will be the ability to secure the best talent for projects. In just a matter of weeks the freelance embedded engineering market has reinvented itself as a predominantly remote supply of specialist services, contributing key skills and subject matter expertise from the comfort of their own remote offices. Instead of being feared, remote contracting is rapidly being embraced as a huge benefit, as project managers begin to benefit from increased productivity and quality of work. Just think of all that time wasted commuting on a daily and often weekly basis, the discomfort of hotel life and the absence of normal stable social surroundings. All these things have a clear negative impact on the amount of time available and more importantly, the quality of the work being produced.
How do we find these remote engineers?
We think we can help you to secure the best remote embedded engineering expertise to enable you to push through your projects at this important time.
Here at CIS Electronics Engineering, we have established ourselves as a leader is the remote flexible workforce solutions across all Electronics and Embedded Systems R&D. Prior to the current ‘stay-at-home’ restrictions placed on many non-essential workers across Europe, over 30% of our consultant engineers were already working from remote locations. Some from their home offices, others have their own local offices and we also provide free office space here at our headquarters in Valencia for local engineers who prefer to work in team environments. We have developed an extensive network of independent engineers from across the globe over the past 18 years and companies work with us to us to expand their reach to select the best global talent, rather than the best local talent. The best engineers from across the globe at much greater value for money – it’s that simple!
Our Solutions
We offer a wide range of innovative flexible skills-based solutions including; cisXperts, EuroXperts, GlobalXperts, CISVcentre and CISOWS. Please visit our website homepage for more information: www.cis-ee.com