The middle market, defined as organizations with annual revenues between $10 million and $1 billion, is responsible for one-third of private sector GDP and employment (HBR). New research from Capital One and Morning Consult explored how middle market companies are investing in 19 strategic and emerging business priorities over the next 1 to 3 years to help meet business goals. The research took into account insight from 400 financial decision-makers from companies with revenues of $20 million to $500 million.

Read the report here.

Key Findings

1. Middle market leaders are optimistic about business conditions, and 86% have plans to grow their business by March 2022.

2. Cybersecurity and employee experience will continue to be two top investment priorities for the middle market moving forward.

• 30% of respondents said that cybersecurity and employee experience/wellness were among their top-5 priorities today.
• Other top selections included data/data analytics (28%), eCommerce (26%), artificial intelligence (24%), customer experience (24%), cloud migration (24%) and upskilling the current workforce (24%).

3. The middle market has adopted a tech-forward mindset, but a technical skills gap is looming. Despite feeling confident that the workforce has the skills and resources to maximize the benefits these technologies and processes  will bring to the business, 20% of respondents reported technology integration is the top challenge that keeps them up at night. Others selected implementing/enforcing COVID-19 safety measures (14%), employee recruitment (11%) and employee    retention (10%).

• They identified skills gaps in management/leadership (32%), data analytics (31%), machine learning (31%), cloud computing (30%), and data science (30%).

4. To overcome the skills gap, the middle market is taking steps to diversify talent pipelines and remove structural and cultural barriers to entry and upskill their workforce  to help their business grow.

• Nearly a quarter of financial decision-makers anticipated upskilling their workforce will be among the top drivers of ROI in the next six months (24%) and more than a quarter of leaders anticipated upskilling workers will drive ROI in the next 1 to 3 years (27%).

Survey Methodology
The Capital One survey was conducted by Morning Consult among 400 U.S. middle market financial decision-makers representing companies with total annual revenues of $20 million to $500 million. The survey was conducted from an online panel from September 1 – September 9, 2021. The margin of error is +/-5%.