Sectors

Five markets we know from both sides.

HealthHow the same money could deliver more and better care.Where demand outgrows supply, and how a provider stands out.EducationHow the system could reach every child and teach each one better.Where families look for more, and how a private school or faculty earns its premium.ICT & digital infrastructureHow support could follow skills and adoption at home, not headcount.Where the market moves from hours to solutions, and which firms are worth backing.Manufacturing & exportersHow support could help domestic firms grow, not only bring new plants.Where domestic manufacturers can sell more, and what it takes to get there.Agri-foodHow farm support could raise what a hectare earns.Where land earns most, and who can capture the value.All sectorsOverview

Topics

Five questions that cut across every market.

SMEs & entrepreneurshipHow support could reach the small and mid-sized firms able to grow.Where domestic know-how sits, and which firms are worth backing.Competitiveness & investmentHow support could raise productivity, not only jobs.Where firms have underinvested, and what it takes to catch up.Public financeHow each dinar could be tied to a purpose, and pay to the value of work.Where the state will spend, and how to compete for it.Green & digital transitionHow carbon revenue and support could help firms measure and cut, not only pay.Where clean power and carbon data open a market, and who can serve it.Skills & labour marketsHow adults in work and out of it could keep learning what the economy needs.Where to find the people a plan needs, and how to train and keep them.All topicsOverview

Services

Economic analysis for governments, donors and international organisations: we diagnose sectors and public spending, design and cost programmes, and evaluate what they changed.Economic analysis for companies and investors: we size markets and plan entry, find and assess firms to buy, and model what a business is worth.

Sector & value-chain diagnosticsWhere a sector creates value, who leads it, and what holds it back.Public expenditure & functional reviewsWhere public money goes, what it achieves, and how the same budget could do more.Policy & programme designWhom a programme should reach, with what instrument, and how it will be judged.Cost-benefit & fiscal impactWhat a policy or project will cost, year by year, and what it returns.EvaluationWhat a programme changed, for whom, and what would have happened anyway.Market entry studiesHow large the market is, who buys, who competes and what it takes to win.Policy, regulatory & public-demand riskHow incentives, licences, rules and public spending move a business case.Market-entry programmesFrom a study to an operation on the ground: set-up, people, partners and first customers.Business plansA plan a board can approve and a lender or investor can fund.Target search & screeningWhich firms exist, who owns them, and which deserve a closer look.Due diligenceWhat a target’s business, clients and earnings really are, before the price is set.Financial models & valuationWhat a business or an investment is worth, and how it pays back under different scenarios.Surveys & primary dataThe evidence that does not exist yet, collected so that it can be trusted.Custom analytical & performance toolsModels, dashboards and indices, used every time a decision comes back.All servicesOverview

Sector

ICT & digital infrastructure

Evidence

Serbia’s digital economy looks different from outside and from inside. Abroad, ICT brings in three of every ten euros the country earns from exporting services; in the EU, under a fifth. At home, fewer than a quarter of firms run their business on integrated management software, half the EU share.

SellsICT services in services exports, of every 100 eurosSerbia 30EU 19WB6 18

Usesfirms with ten or more employees that use integrated business software (ERP), of every 100Serbia 23EU 46

Eurostat, balance of payments (NBS data for Serbia) and use of ERP software by enterprises, 2025; WB6 summed over the six economies

Context

For governments, regional bodies and donorsFor technology companies and investors

Serbia built an IT sector that sells engineers’ time abroad, and it became one of the country’s largest earners. That model is reaching its limits, as AI, more demanding clients and engineers who are no longer cheap change what an hour of programming is worth. At home the networks and e-government are largely in place; the gap is in use, as firms have been slow to adopt business software and AI and many people lack basic digital skills.

Public support has gone mainly to the supply of engineers and the firms employing them: study places and retraining, tax relief for research and intellectual property, and payroll relief for new hires. It rewarded headcount and hours sold abroad, and it worked while hours grew. What is needed next is different: skills beyond the technical, first jobs that keep juniors in the pipeline, readiness for AI across the workforce, and help for small firms that want to digitalise but lack the people to do it. The question for policy is how support could follow skills and adoption rather than headcount, and change predictably.

We co-wrote the Regional Cooperation Council’s study of ICT skills in the six Western Balkan economies and drafted the OECD’s chapters on how the region’s small firms digitalise, and our work for technology companies shows the same shift from inside the firms.

For companies, the opening is the move from selling hours to selling solutions. Clients want products, domain knowledge and responsibility for results, and that takes people who can manage a product and work with a client, not only code. In the development centres of foreign companies the parent decides that move; domestically owned firms have to make it themselves. At home, demand comes from firms catching up on cloud, business software and AI, above all small and mid-sized ones that lack the skills in-house: room for providers that implement and support, not only sell licences.

We follow this market, and the policies around it, through the region’s ICT skills study and the OECD’s survey of how small firms digitalise, and rebuild a firm’s profit from its books before a price is set.

Direction

What we do here

Sector & value-chain diagnosticsWhere a sector creates value, who leads it, and what holds it back.Policy & programme designWhom a programme should reach, with what instrument, and how it will be judged.Surveys & primary dataThe evidence that does not exist yet, collected so that it can be trusted.

Examples of our work

For institutionsOECD2026–27Local expert for Serbia and North Macedonia

Electricity, digital and regional interconnectivity in South East Europe

Local expertise for the OECD team: mapping the institutions that decide on energy and digital networks, convening them in Belgrade and Skopje, and reviewing the country diagnostics.

For investorsInternational technology group2026

Market-entry strategy for Serbia

No published source measures this market, so we built it from primary records: a census of six years of public contracts and tender files, the filed accounts of the supplier base and an object-by-object model of commercial demand. It was sized from the demand and the supply side independently and forecast to 2032 in a model the client can adjust.

For investorsProspective buyer2026

Due diligence of a software company in Serbia: business model, clients and quality of earnings

Ten years of statutory accounts, the company’s own management model reconciled with the books, revenue by client and type of work, and a bridge from reported to recurring profit, ending in a valuation range against regional deal multiples and a price split between a fixed and a deferred part.

For investorsEuropean investor2026

Acquisition search in digital infrastructure

A desk screen of firms in Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and North Macedonia, drawn from business registers, regulators’ market data, routing registries and procurement records. Each firm is scored on six criteria, a top score requires a register or regulator source, and every open fact is listed with the check that would settle it.

All work

What we do here

Market entry studiesHow large the market is, who buys, who competes and what it takes to win.Target search & screeningWhich firms exist, who owns them, and which deserve a closer look.Due diligenceWhat a target’s business, clients and earnings really are, before the price is set.

Examples of our work

For investorsInternational technology group2026

Market-entry strategy for Serbia

No published source measures this market, so we built it from primary records: a census of six years of public contracts and tender files, the filed accounts of the supplier base and an object-by-object model of commercial demand. It was sized from the demand and the supply side independently and forecast to 2032 in a model the client can adjust.

For investorsProspective buyer2026

Due diligence of a software company in Serbia: business model, clients and quality of earnings

Ten years of statutory accounts, the company’s own management model reconciled with the books, revenue by client and type of work, and a bridge from reported to recurring profit, ending in a valuation range against regional deal multiples and a price split between a fixed and a deferred part.

For investorsEuropean investor2026

Acquisition search in digital infrastructure

A desk screen of firms in Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and North Macedonia, drawn from business registers, regulators’ market data, routing registries and procurement records. Each firm is scored on six criteria, a top score requires a register or regulator source, and every open fact is listed with the check that would settle it.

For institutionsOECD2026–27Local expert for Serbia and North Macedonia

Electricity, digital and regional interconnectivity in South East Europe

Local expertise for the OECD team: mapping the institutions that decide on energy and digital networks, convening them in Belgrade and Skopje, and reviewing the country diagnostics.

All work

Earlier experience

Before Econominess, as executive director of a Belgrade economic think tank, Nemanja Šormaz worked on how firms in Serbia and the region take up digital technology, and on the policies around it.

2018–2020Lead of the think tank’s team

Business opinion across the Western Balkans

Analysis of two editions of the regional business opinion survey of firms in the six Western Balkan economies, including the chapters on innovation and technology: internet use, online sales, security and digital skills.

2022–2025Project manager and co-author

Digital adoption by small firms

The research and monitoring behind SME Compass, an index of SME competitiveness with pillars on Industry 4.0 and innovation, and the SME100 barometer of leading exporting SMEs.

2020–2025Project manager

Digital policy and competitiveness

Competitiveness-policy diagnostics for the six Western Balkan economies, each with a review of how firms digitalise, and a project that set out how state-aid data could be published as open data, developed with the government’s e-government office.

Talk to Nemanja Šormaz

The other side

Where the market moves from hours to solutions, and which firms are worth backing.How support could follow skills and adoption at home, not headcount.

Read this as an investorRead this as an institution
Next sectorManufacturing & exporters

Contact

Tell us the decision in front of you, and when you need it.

nemanja@econominess.rs

Company profile, PDF · Belgrade, Serbia