The European Growth & Technology Outlook 2027
How trust, data and AI are reshaping business decisions across Europe. Discover what separates fast-growing companies from those falling behind.
Table of contents
→ 77%
of connected companies expect strong growth in 2027. Fragmented companies? Just 26%.
"The message is clear: connected companies grow, fragmented ones fall behind."
Hello, and thank you for taking the time to read our report. We commissioned this research because we kept hearing the same thing from customers and partners across Europe. Growth ambitions haven't gone away, but the ground rules for pursuing them have changed. AI is everywhere, data is scattered across more systems than ever, and questions about who governs that data, and where, have moved from the compliance team's inbox to the boardroom table.
So we asked 371 decision-makers across five markets what's actually happening inside their businesses, growth, AI, trust – all of it. The answer surprised even us. Companies that have connected their systems and their data are pulling meaningfully ahead of those that haven't, by 30 percentage points or more on the metrics that matter: growth confidence, compliance confidence, and how much they trust their own AI tools. Nearly 9 out of 10 companies say they have an AI policy. Fewer than half can actually monitor whether employees follow it.
No matter where your company stands, I hope this gives you an honest read on where European businesses stand, and where the real opportunities are. I know it's clarified my thinking about what we should be doing.
– Bjørn
Connected companies are
winning on growth
Connected companies grow. Fragmented ones fall behind. The gap is stark: companies with connected systems and AI already delivering results are strongly optimistic about growth at nearly three times the rate of those with neither, 77% compared with 26%. Integration matters more than the AI itself. A connected company barely using AI (47%) still beats a fragmented company using it heavily (40%).
This same pattern shows up throughout the report: in whether an AI policy actually gets enforced, in what actually drives a purchase decision, and in how a leader’s confidence compares with their own team's. In every case, the foundation matters more than anything layered on top of it.
Fully integrated companies show far higher growth confidence than the rest. 64% of fully integrated companies expect significant growth and are actively investing to capture it, compared with 29% of partially integrated companies and 27% of those with no integration at all.
Integration is the foundation for growth. AI accelerates results, but without connected systems, even the best tools can’t deliver their full value. The companies pulling ahead are those that have invested in both integration and smart AI adoption.
We surveyed 371 B2B decision-makers in Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands to test it. Every one of them is a final decision-maker or strong influencer on CRM, customer data, and AI tooling in their company. Here's what we found.
Connected companies are pulling ahead
64% of fully integrated companies are strongly optimistic about growth, more than double the 29% of partially integrated companies. The same pattern holds for compliance and AI confidence too, both by 30 or more percentage points.
Most AI policies exist
on paper only
88% say they have a clear AI policy. Only 43% can actually monitor how employees use it.
70% want a
European vendor
7 out of 10 prefer European vendors. Data residency, compliance oversight, and local expertise are why.
Integration beats AI as the top investment priority
38% of companies name system integration their top technology priority for the next 12 months, ahead of AI tools at 28%. The fix companies need is already the one they're planning.
Security and compliance is the #1 purchase decision
Security and compliance lead at 39%. AI capability (37%) and integration (36%) follow close behind. Pricing (32%), ease of use (30%), and vendor location (18%) round out the picture.
CEOs see twice the AI visibility their teams do
65% of CEOs report full AI policy visibility. Only 35% of their own C-suite and management teams do.
94% of companies expect growth in the year ahead. Not everyone is counting on it the same way.
46% of companies describe themselves as strongly optimistic about growth over the next 12 months. A further 49% are cautiously optimistic. Almost nobody expects to decline.
That headline number only tells part of the story. The companies driving most of it aren't a random slice of the 46%. They're disproportionately the same companies that have connected their systems and are already seeing results from AI. We'll show the full picture in chapter 3, and name the two resulting groups in chapter 5.
The short version: Not all growth confidence is created equal. The difference comes down to foundation, not enthusiasm.
Share of companies by growth outlook, next 12 months
Growth priorities split between offense and defense: acquiring new customers versus retaining existing ones. Acquiring new customers (26%) and retaining existing relationships (21%) top the list, closely followed by improving sales and commercial productivity (21%). Only 4% of companies prioritize cost cutting. Most are still investing in growth.
CRM connection
The top three growth priorities in this data, new customer acquisition, retention, and commercial team productivity, are exactly what a CRM connects across sales, marketing, and service. Acquisition drives the pipeline, retention drives renewals and customer success. Productivity improves when all three functions work off one shared customer view.
Bettina Isabelle Berntsen
Chief Marketing Officer, SuperOffice
“94% of European businesses expect growth, even in a tough market. That optimism is what Europe needs right now. What they don't need is complexity. They need powerful AI tools ready to use from day one, not something they have to build themselves. And that’s what drives us.”
Companies already know
what to fix first, and it isn't AI
Ask companies what they plan to do with their technology over the next 12 months, and the answer isn't AI.
38% say their top priority is better integration between existing business systems, like CRM and ERP. That's ahead of adopting or expanding AI tools (28%) and ahead of buying a new CRM outright (20%). Businesses are clearly telling us that the wiring matters more than the tool.
Integration is the number one
priority for technology investment, ahead of AI.
The data is telling us that the wiring matters more than the tool. The data backs them up: 48% of companies describe their customer facing tools and core business systems as fully integrated. Another 48% call themselves partially integrated, meaning data flows between systems, but with gaps and manual workarounds in between. Split almost exactly down the middle, these two groups behave like different companies entirely.
Share of companies, by integration level
Fully integrated companies outscore partially integrated ones by 30 or more percentage points on every measure that matters:
- How optimistic they are about growth
- How confident they are in their GDPR compliance
- How much visibility they have into their own AI usage
This holds across company sizes, and in four of the five markets we surveyed.
Integration matters more than industry, size, or market. It's the strongest single predictor of whether a company feels in control of its growth, its compliance, and its AI strategy.
Layer AI maturity on top of integration status, and the picture sharpens further.
Share strongly optimistic about growth, by integration status and AI maturity
A fragmented company running advanced AI (40%) is still less confident than a connected company that hasn't gotten far with AI yet (47%). Fully integrated companies are also more than twice as likely to have reached advanced AI use in the first place: 56%, compared with 24% for partially integrated companies. The sequencing runs one way. Connect first, and AI has something real to work with. Skip that step, and AI adds less than fixing the foundation would have.
This lines up with how companies feel about AI more broadly. 61% agree AI is overhyped relative to the value it actually delivers. The most advanced AI users are the most likely to say so, not the beginners: 70%, compared with 56% among those still experimenting. Connect the systems first, and AI stops being hype. It becomes a multiplier.
“We hear this from customers constantly. They want to talk about AI, but the real blocker is almost always that their systems don't talk to each other yet. This data confirms what we already tell people: fix the foundation first. AI built on top of fragmented data just moves the mess faster.”
Camilla Heidenreich Bommen
Chief Commercial Officer, SuperOffice
Tool sprawl tells the same story from a different angle. 194 companies (52%) juggle 2 to 3 separate systems for customer data, and a further 105 (28%) run 4 to 6. Only 53 companies (14%) have consolidated everything into one system.
CRM connection
52% of companies run 2-3 separate systems for customer data, and 28% run 4-6. A CRM is the consolidation layer this chapter is describing: one system instead of several, which is also why the numbers above close as cleanly as they do.
This is a story that plays out the same way across sales, marketing, and service. A sales rep working with a fragmented view of the customer is guessing about what happens next in the deal. A marketer working with fragmented data is guessing about what message lands and when. A service rep with incomplete history is guessing how to actually solve the problem. Each is working blind. A sales rep, marketer, or service agent working off one connected view isn't. They know what was said, what was promised, and what comes next.
Growth optimism by market
The connected versus fragmented split in growth optimism (the first row of the table above) holds up market by market, though the size of the gap varies.
Denmark and the Netherlands show the widest gap between connected and fragmented companies. Norway shows the narrowest, worth noting given chapter 7 covers Norway in more depth.
Select view:
- Norway40,9 %
- Sweden57,7 %
- Denmark75,5 %
- Netherlands81,6 %
- Germany50 %
Circle size shows each market's share within the selected view.
Companies say they have an AI policy. Most can't prove it
88% of companies agree they have a clear policy governing how employees use AI tools with company or customer data. Only 43% report full visibility to actually monitor and enforce it. This is the largest disconnect (over 40%) between stated policy and actual oversight anywhere in the survey.
This chapter stays separate from growth trends, because the two measure different things. Chapter 2 asks how confident companies feel about the next 12 months. This chapter asks whether the systems exist to back that confidence up with real oversight.
The two aren't unrelated, though. Companies with full AI policy visibility are nearly twice as likely to be strongly optimistic about growth as companies without it: 63%, compared with 32%. Simply saying you have a policy doesn't move that number much on its own, companies who say yes but don't have full visibility sit at 36%, barely above the baseline. Visibility is what connects governance to confidence, which is why it earns its own chapter here rather than a subsection of chapter 2.
Companies who say they have a policy but lack full visibility sit at 36%, close to the no-visibility baseline. A policy on paper doesn't build confidence. Real visibility does.
The distance between 88% and 43% matters because attitudes about AI risk aren't casual, and adoption isn't a fringe activity either. If the stakes were low, an unenforced policy would just be paperwork. They aren't low, which is what the numbers below show:
Share of companies by stage of AI adoption
Where AI is delivering results,
and why that's CRM territory
Asked where AI has made the most meaningful difference, excluding companies who say it's too early to tell, three answers dominate: faster or better personalised customer communication (18%), automating repetitive sales or admin tasks (16%), and automating document creation such as proposals and contracts (13%).
Where AI has made the most meaningful difference (excluding “too early to tell”)
Look closely at those three areas and a pattern emerges. None of them are general AI capabilities you'd bolt onto anything. They're things that only work when a system already has the full customer record in front of it: the conversation history to personalise from, the account context to automate a task correctly, the deal details to draft a proposal that isn't generic. An AI tool without that record is guessing. A CRM is where that record lives, which is exactly why these three results cluster the way they do.
This is also where integration and AI stop being separate topics and become one finding. The companies getting real results from AI are disproportionately the same companies who connected their systems first. AI didn't create these results on its own. It amplified an already connected foundation.
Thomas Rødseth
Chief Product and Technology Officer, SuperOffice
“The AI features our customers actually keep using are the quiet ones: drafting a follow-up, filling in a proposal, remembering what was said last time. All of that depends on one connected record behind the scenes. Give AI that foundation, and it earns its keep fast.”
The blind spot isn't just between companies. It's inside them too
CEOs report far more oversight than the people actually running AI and compliance day to day, inside the same organisations:
Share of respondents by role
If you're a CEO, the harder question isn't whether you have a policy. It's whether your own team would describe your visibility the same way you just did.
The fix here isn't more policy, it's fewer places policy has to be manually applied.
CRM connection
A single governed customer record that every tool reads from and writes to turns policy from a document into a default. That's the practical difference between the 88% who say they have an AI policy and the 43% who can actually monitor and enforce it.
Two groups of companies are
living this data very differently
Combining integration status with AI maturity produces two clearly distinct groups of companies.
Connected Growth Leaders
- Fully integrated systems, plus AI already delivering measurable results.
- 27% of the sample, 1.7x more likely than average to be strongly growth-optimistic.
- 77% Strongly optimistic
- 85% Very confident GDPR
- 77% Full AI visibility
Fragmented Companies
- Partial or no integration, plus AI stuck in experimentation or evaluation.
- 39% of the sample, the single largest group in the study.
- 26% Strongly optimistic
- 30% Very confident GDPR
- 26% Full AI visibility
Fragmented Companies isn't concentrated in one market, industry, or company size. It shows up everywhere we looked, at broadly similar rates. That's what turns this from a story about a few struggling companies into a structural feature of the European mid-market: the largest single segment in this study is also its most exposed one.
Connected Growth Leaders aren't simply more mature versions of the Fragmented Companies. They made a specific, identifiable choice to connect their systems before scaling AI on top of them. That choice is available to every company in this dataset, regardless of size or market.
Camilla Heidenreich Bommen
Chief Commercial Officer, SuperOffice
“I've managed both kinds of teams. The ones with one shared view of the customer move faster and argue less about whose numbers are right. The ones without it spend half of every pipeline meeting just agreeing on the facts first. That's the real cost of fragmentation, slower everything, not just slower growth.”
CRM connection
The line between these two segments is consolidation, not budget or headcount. Connected Growth Leaders run on one connected record of the customer, and the Fragmented Companies doesn’t. That's a decision a company can make regardless of which segment it starts in.
Companies say they want
a European vendor
70% do, when you combine strong and slight preference, and 56% feel strongly enough about it to call it a strong preference outright. That's a real, clear signal, and it's one of the more useful findings in this report for anyone building a case for a European vendor.
It's also worth putting these two numbers in context rather than against each other. Buyers told us plainly what shapes the actual decision:
- data security and compliance leads at 39%
- followed by AI and automation capability (37%)
- integration with existing systems (36%)
- pricing and total cost of ownership (32%)
- and ease of use (30%).
- Vendor location sits at 18%
“European vendor preference is real and growing. Almost 1 out of 5 companies name it as a top purchase factor. But buyers need to see the fundamentals first: is it secure, does it fit our stack, will our team actually use it. Answer those three questions well, and being European becomes a real competitive edge. Buyers trust European companies to have their compliance and governance in place.”
Vidar Utne
Chief Information Security Officer,
SuperOffice
CRM connection
That purchase driver list is also, in practice, a checklist for what a CRM can prove rather than claim: security, AI capability, integration, and ease of use are all things a buyer can verify directly in a product. A European vendor still has to win on that list. This is ours to win.
What drives purchase decision
40% of Norwegian companies report advanced AI use delivering measurable results, in line with the European average of 39%. Norway is getting real results from AI, at the same pace as the rest of Europe.
The part that needs attention is policy visibility, whether leadership can actually see how AI is being used inside their own company, not government regulation. Norway has the second highest share of companies worried that AI risk could cost them customers (67%, behind only Denmark's 77%), paired with the lowest AI policy visibility of any market we surveyed (36%, against a European average of 43%).
Share of companies, by country
CRM connection
Full AI policy visibility and GDPR confidence are, in practice, downstream of having one governed customer record rather than several. That holds in Norway as much as anywhere else. It's simply more visible here, because adoption has moved faster than the oversight built around it.
Swedish companies are proving that you don't have to choose between caution and growth. They are building governance as they grow their AI capabilities.
While other markets either race ahead on AI adoption or hold back from worry, Swedish companies are moving differently. They're worried about the risks, with 45% saying AI could cost them customers. But 45% also have full visibility into how their teams are actually using it.
Share of Swedish companies
Worry that AI could cost them customers
Have full visibility into AI policy
CRM connection
The companies that worry about the right things and build to address them are the ones that deploy AI successfully. That's the pattern Sweden is following.
Danish companies are worried about AI risk, and they're using that worry as a guide for what to build next.
77% of Danish companies say AI could cost them customers, more than any other market we looked at. They know exactly what's at risk, and 42% have full visibility into their AI policy to manage it. They see the problem, and now comes building the visibility to match the concern.
Share of Danish companies
CRM connection
Worry becomes useful when you act on it. One connected customer record is where most of this concern goes away, because you can actually see what's happening, and you're no longer guessing.
Dutch companies are in the exploration phase, and they can afford to be there. They've already built the foundation to experiment safely.
84% of Dutch companies use multiple systems to manage customer data. 56% specifically use 2-3 systems. The foundation is there, but 51% are still exploring what AI can actually deliver for their business.
Share of Dutch companies
Use multiple systems to manage customer data
Still experimenting with AI
CRM connection
A connected system lets you see what's working in real time. You can experiment safely because you're building on something solid. The Netherlands has that foundation, now it's just about figuring out what to do with it.
German companies already know the formula, and they're proof it works.
49% of German companies have fully integrated systems. 35% are already using advanced AI with measurable results. Only 42% worry about AI risk, less than any other market. German companies connected their systems first and the AI came after. The results show it.
Share of German companies: foundation first, then results
CRM connection
German companies built the connected foundation first. Everything that comes after: the AI, the visibility, the results, flows from that. That's why their numbers look different from the rest of Europe.
The picture so far
Look across every market in this data, and the same shape keeps showing up. The companies pulling ahead connected their systems before adding AI on top. Everyone else is optimistic, but hasn't proven it yet.
The same pattern plays out inside individual companies too. Leaders believe they have oversight. Their own teams often see something different. Even when markets move at different speeds: some prioritizing AI adoption, others focusing on governance first, the companies that pull ahead are the ones with connected systems underneath it all.
One thing keeps explaining the rest: whether a company connected its systems first. Everything below follows from that.
What creates growth in 2027?
Three things that move the needle in 2027. Everything else is worth watching for now.
That headline number only tells part of the story. The companies driving most of it aren't a random slice of the 46%. They're disproportionately the same companies that have connected their systems and are already seeing results from AI. We'll show the full picture in chapter 3, and name the two resulting groups in chapter 5.
The short version: Not all growth confidence is created equal. The difference comes down to foundation, not enthusiasm.
Connect the systems before scaling AI
Every meaningful AI result in this report (personalised communication, automating admin, drafting proposals) depends on the same thing: one connected view of the customer. Without it, AI is guessing. With it, AI has context. Fully integrated companies outperform partially integrated ones by 30 or more percentage points on growth confidence, GDPR confidence, and AI visibility, because integration is the foundation that context runs on. It's also already the single most common technology priority companies have set for the next 12 months. The findings point the same direction: connection first creates the ground that AI stands on.
Turn AI policy into monitored one
88% say they have a policy. 43% can actually enforce it. Closing that gap is both the biggest exposure in this data and the clearest opportunity for whoever moves first.
Grow by using what you already have
Connected Growth Leaders' top growth priority is improving sales and commercial team productivity (28%), ahead of acquiring new customers (27%). The Fragmented Companies does the opposite: chasing new customers (27%) while productivity ranks third (18%). Connected companies get more out of what they already have instead of spending more to acquire.
If you run a sales, marketing, or service team specifically, start closer to home. Give your reps one place to see a customer's full history, pipeline, and next step. Give marketing the same view of customer engagement and lifecycle stage. Give service the same record of what the customer has bought and what they've been promised. Before adding another tool on top. That's the same 30 point pattern from chapter 3, playing out at the level a manager can actually fix, without waiting on IT or legal.
Three more things belong in the picture. Buyers prefer a European vendor, a preference that just needs the fundamentals behind it to close the deal. Once integration is handled, the next priorities on companies' own roadmaps are AI expansion (28%) and a new CRM outright (20%). And Norway's AI adoption is currently outpacing its oversight (chapter 7), worth watching as the same pattern shows up in other markets.
CRM connection
All three recommendations point to the same starting point: one connected customer record that sales, marketing, and service all read from and write to. That's what a CRM is built to be, and it's the fastest way to act on everything above.
Where a CRM fits into this
Nothing in this report is about software. But several findings, measured independently across five markets, point at the same underlying shape: the difference is in how connected their systems are, more than in how much AI they've adopted.
Companies say integration, not AI, is their top technology priority for the next 12 months (chapter 3).
The fully connected half outperforms the fragmented half by 30 or more points on growth, compliance, and AI confidence (chapter 3).
Tool sprawl is the norm, not the exception: 52% of companies run 2 to 3 separate systems for customer data alone, and 28% run 4 to 6 (chapter 3).
The AI wins companies already report, personalised communication, admin automation, document generation, all depend on having the full customer record in one place, which is what chapter 4 covers in more depth.
Compliance confidence tracks the same pattern: only 49% are very confident they're GDPR compliant with verified processes, and a verified process is, in practice, a single governed source of customer data.
If you run a sales, marketing, or service team specifically, start closer to home. Give your reps one place to see a customer's full history, pipeline, and next step. Give marketing the same view of customer engagement and lifecycle stage. Give service the same record of what the customer has bought and what they've been promised. Before adding another tool on top. That's the same 30 point pattern from chapter 3, playing out at the level a manager can actually fix, without waiting on IT or legal.
Before you close this
Seven questions to hold up as a mirror:
- Could you see your full pipeline right now, without asking someone else to check?
- If someone audited your AI policy tomorrow, would the answer match what you told us today?
- How many separate systems hold a single customer's data right now?
- Would your own team describe your GDPR confidence the same way you just did?
- If a lead went quiet for a month, would anyone notice, and would they know why?
- Are your teams using AI and technology to spend less time on admin, and more time on what matters - building real relationships with customers?
- Could your team spend more time on meaningful customer relationships if their systems actually talked to each other?
The short version
We opened this report with a claim: connected companies grow, and fragmented ones fall behind. Here's what we found chasing that claim across five markets and 371 companies.
Confidence is high, but only companies with connected systems have the infrastructure to back it up (chapter 2).
The reason is connection: fully integrated companies outperform partially integrated ones by 30 or more points on nearly everything we measured, and integration is already the top technology priority companies have set for themselves (chapter 3).
AI amplifies that advantage rather than replacing it, and the same blind spot shows up inside individual companies too: CEOs report far more visibility than their own teams do (chapter 4).
Connected Growth Leaders and Fragmented Companies show the same pattern everywhere we looked: in every market, every company size, every industry (chapter 5).
Companies say they want a European vendor, and security, AI capability, and integration are what actually close the deal (chapter 6). Market readiness varies: from early AI adoption in some regions to mature integration in others, the foundation matters everywhere (chapter 7).
None of this is a reason to panic, and none of it is a reason to buy anything out of fear. It's a reason to be honest about which group your own company is actually in, before deciding what to do next.
Connected companies grow. Now you know where you stand.
How this research was conducted
SuperOffice commissioned this study in partnership with research agency Datalily, fielded via the Centiment survey panel. Respondents were screened to include only decision-makers and strong influencers on CRM, customer data, or AI tooling within their organisation, at B2B or B2B and B2C companies of 30 to 300 employees.
371 total respondents
5 markets: Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Netherlands.
313 base for AI-impact-area findings
30–300 employee company size range
Country-specific statistics from this report
Norway
- 45% of Norwegian companies have a strong preference for European technology providers.
- 95% of Norwegian companies use multiple tools to manage customer data. 47% specifically use 2-3 systems.
- 47% of Norwegian companies will prioritize better system integration (top tech priority for next 12 months).
Sweden
- 68% of Swedish companies have a strong preference for European technology providers.
- 81% of Swedish companies use multiple tools to manage customer data. 59% specifically use 2-3 systems.
- 44% of Swedish companies will prioritize better system integration (top tech priority for next 12 months).
- 65% of Swedish companies have only partially integrated systems.
Denmark
- 40% of Danish companies have a strong preference for European technology providers.
- 95% of Danish companies use multiple tools to manage customer data. 38% specifically use 2-3 systems, while 52% use 4-6 systems.
- 26% of Danish companies will prioritize better system integration (top tech priority for next 12 months).
Netherlands
- 56% of Dutch companies have a strong preference for European technology providers.
- 84% of Dutch companies use multiple tools to manage customer data. 56% specifically use 2-3 systems.
- 39% of Dutch companies will prioritize better system integration (top tech priority for next 12 months).
- 51% of Dutch companies are still experimenting with AI, despite high integration and optimism.
Germany
- 65% of German companies have a strong preference for European technology providers.
- 78% of German companies use multiple tools to manage customer data. 59% specifically use 2-3 systems.
- 36% of German companies will prioritize better system integration (top tech priority for next 12 months).
- AI Maturity: 35% of German companies are using advanced AI with measurable results, while 46% are still experimenting. This shows Germany is actively exploring AI, but only about a third have moved to the stage of getting tangible value.
- System Integration: 49% of German companies have fully integrated systems, but 44% are still relying on partial integration, indicating a digital divide in operational efficiency.
- Growth Optimism: 38% of German companies are strongly optimistic about significant growth, while 51% are cautiously optimistic. Only 10% expect flat growth, and just 1% are pessimistic.
Connected companies grow.
It starts with one system.
This report's clearest finding is that integration beats any single tool, including AI.
If your systems don't talk to each other yet, that's the place to start.
77% of connected, AI-ready companies expect strong growth
That's compared to 46% across all companies in this report. Where would your company land in this data?
70% of companies want a European vendor
Location isn't the only factor buyers weigh, but for seven in ten it's part of the picture. Data residency and jurisdiction is worth a closer look.
Talk to a team that knows your market
SuperOffice is built and supported across Europe, not bolted onto a one-size-fits-all global platform. Book time with people who know your kind of business.
Table of contents