Simon Arcus: Business Central CEO on the rising optimism among business leaders

New Zealand businesses believe things are looking up, with optimism at a high. 

The 2degrees 2025 Shaping Business Study reveals 45% of surveyed business leaders are more optimistic about the year ahead – up on last year's 34%. 

46% of businesses also report they're more productive than last year.  

Business Central CEO Simon Arcus told Ryan Bridge things will probably still fluctuate in coming years.  

He says there are often moments where things seem to improve, then sink back again. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:09):
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Speaker 2 (00:16):
Right the sun has come out from behind the clouds.
For business owners, new data from two degrees shows optimism
is that its highest since twenty twenty one. Forty five
percent of business leaders feel better about their footing than
they did a year ago. Simon Arcus is Business Central
CEO with me this morning, Simon.

Speaker 3 (00:32):
Good morning, Good morning to here, Ryan.

Speaker 2 (00:34):
How are you very well? Thank you? Does this include
Wellington businesses?

Speaker 3 (00:39):
Look, it does include Wellington businesses. It's good to see
and really really good to Also, businesses feel like the
future is looking brighter.

Speaker 2 (00:47):
Interesting. They also talk about I mean, productivity has been
a bugbear of ours for a long time, but businesses
themselves reporting that they think productivity is trending upwards.

Speaker 3 (00:56):
I think it's a really interesting observation, Ryan. That's partly
I think because the reality is that it's been a
big focus of business in the last or one and
of course the government is driven by raising productivity. Probably
the one thing I'd noted which is really interesting is
this month we had actually contraction in the manufacturing and
the services industry. So there's a piece of data going

(01:19):
out of the way as well, which is really interesting too.

Speaker 2 (01:21):
Yeah, how do you marry those things up? I mean,
it is one It is one month, isn't it?

Speaker 3 (01:26):
It is one month? And I think I think two
things can be true at once, and you can have
optimism often precedes, you know, a good news, and you
can have a little bad news on the way. I
think the reason for that is the businesses they get,
they have a sense of what the future is looking like,
so they've got forward orders, they've got all those sorts
of things. So actually, probably isn't the worry that it
might be any other time, So that optimism is a

(01:48):
good thing.

Speaker 2 (01:48):
And no one said it was going to be a straight, safe,
easy flight path out of the quagmire, right, It's always
going to be a little bit bumpy along the way.

Speaker 3 (01:58):
I think bumpy is a great word. I think we're
bumping along the bottom a little bit. There are sort
of haltering momentary things seem to improve, and then we
sink back a little bit. But I think it's two
steps forward once back. But the general direction and the
two degrees survey seems to confirm this is good optimistic
feelings about the future.

Speaker 2 (02:17):
Appreciate your time this morning, Simon. Great to have you
on this show. Simon Arcis Business Central CEO with us
from Wellington this morning.

Speaker 1 (02:23):
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