Week 45 - 2024¶
👥 Bouvet-konferansen 2024 - for ledere og selgere¶
This week, everyone holding a leadership role at Bouvet gathered for the annual "Bouvet-konferansen 2024 - for ledere og selgere" in Trondheim. These gatherings serve multiple purposes: inspiration, status updates at Bouvet, how different regions are following up on the market, deep dives into relevant topics, etc. We heard from Nils Brede Moe from SINTEF, who researches teams. He shared insights into what makes good teams, based on findings from many companies they work with in Norway. Psychological safety tops the list here as well, but he had some observations about teams consisting only of members with smaller internal networks within the company. It turns out that teams without larger internal networks also have slower delivery speeds. This was among the insights from the teams they had researched at Spotify.
Another exciting and insightful lecture was from Anders Romarheim (Norwegian Defence University College). He discussed the topic of "The geopolitical development and what the outcome of the US election means," which was, of course, very relevant. It's difficult to summarize in a few lines, but given the recent US election, we are watching with interest how the outcome will play out for us in Europe. In summary, Romarheim's message was a reminder that Trump, who was elected, is primarily focused on trade. He is a businessman, and his focus will be on creating growth for the USA and not necessarily having destructive intentions, which would not help trade. However, it is with interest that we see how he will approach various leaders in different countries. He also pointed out that the situation in Taiwan might be something to watch. He believed that strategically for China, the situation has never been better to enter Taiwan.
We also had a lecture from Knut Magne Risvik (VP Microsoft Research), who has many years of experience from Google and Microsoft, particularly in search and AI. Knut Magne was one of the founders of Fast (the search engine) and has now worked for many years with AI deliveries at Microsoft. He went through the history behind "Co-Pilot" at Microsoft and how they are now investing and betting hughe in this technology, believing it will create a significant shift in the industry. Knut's observations are that we are still in the early stages of how we utilize this technology. As examples of how much they are investing in the expansion of AI, he mentioned things like 50% of all electricians in Georgia, US, work for Microsoft. This is related to the expansion of data centers with AI tasks. He believed that it was urgent for developers to upskill in how they utilize language models to support developers in their daily work.
We also received a summary from our CEO, Per Gunnar Tronsli, about the "state of the nation" at Bouvet. This coming Tuesday, the quarterly results for 3rd quarter will be presented, so he was naturally cautious about mentioning stock-sensitive figures. But even in a time like now, where the market is somewhat calmer, Bouvet is growing. We hear from other competitors that they are struggling more than Bouvet is experiencing, and it was mentioned that one of our competitors sees a 14% decline in profits and has had to lay off hundreds of employees in Sweden. So right now, it looks like Bouvet is strongly positioned in the market.
📊 Business Plans 2025¶
Numbers and Figures¶
Currently, I am working on drafts for the 2025 business plans. Regarding the growth in the number of employees in Lambda, I would like the ambition to be a growth to 25 employees by 2025. Although we see a calmer market right now, several reports indicate moderate growth in our local market. According to Gartner, IT services globally are expected to grow by 9.4% in 2025. Although this is a global forecast, we can assume that similar trends will apply to Stavanger, especially considering the increasing digitalization and investments in new technology in the region.
Additionally, a report from Virtue Market Research shows that the global market for IT consulting services is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 4.5% from 2024 to 2030. This gives us an indication that growth in Stavanger may also be in this range, but probably closer to the higher end of the scale due to specific regional factors such as increased digitalization and technology investments.
The ambition for our MFO (Margin før overskuddsfordeling) for 2025 would probably be around 16% and FG (Faktureringsgrad) approx 82%. Curerntly (Jan-Sept) our MFO is at 13% and FG 78%
Competence - AI¶
Regarding competence development, I want us to have a greater ambition to utilize language models (generative AI) when developing software. What this means in practice, we need to figure out together, but something related to online courses on how to utilize generative AI in development, as well as which generative AI services we can utilize, will be a topic.
A challenge for services that are data center-based, is that we share business sensitive information/code with the service. Therefore, I have explored LM Studio which allows the user to do everything locally, based on many open-source models. Exciting topic! We must work together on competence measures to get the right value for us in our daily tasks. We must take measures that make us more curious and prepare us to utilize generative AI in SDLC as a whole.
Wishing you a good weekend when it comes!