When you think about what will pull us out of our nation’s economic slump, what do you come up with? Is it the government? Major conglomerates? Small businesses? Believe it or not, most likely it will be America’s midsize companies.

These businesses are far more important to the U.S. economy than most people realize. In 2011, Deloitte found that mid-size businesses employ more people than the entire S&P 500 and have total revenues equivalent to 40% of the U.S. GDP. And in 2012, midsize businesses still hold their position as having the greatest affect on economic growth – domestically and globally.

Even though growth and hiring expectations are more modest than they were last year, executives of midsize companies are planning to grow their companies through innovation, capturing higher-value customers, boosting revenue per customer, and improving customer loyalty.

The 2012 Deloitte “America’s Engine” study identified the following the top three technology trends (listed below in order of priority) that are helping midsize companies achieve those goals:

1. Automation: Automation of business processes, analytics, and business intelligence are quickly becoming a key part of these companies’ productivity improvements strategy.
2. Business data and analytics: Businesses are concentrating on building day-to-day analytics around business metrics – which means investing in capturing the data, building better repositories, analyzing it, and reporting it.
3. Cloud computing/Software-as-a-service (SaaS): Many executives believe that the Cloud will help keep IT staffing and overhead to a minimum as the business continues to grow.

Read Deloitte’s study “Mid-Market Perspectives: 2012 Report on America’s Economic Engine” for detailed interviews about the transformative benefits gained from these trends.

More and more, we are finding that midsize companies are investing in cloud computing to gain “big business” advantages such as automation, business intelligence, and analytics. By leveraging these capabilities, these companies can seize the opportunity to impact the economy for generations to come.

Interested in learning more about the issues affecting how businesses are prioritizing their investments and transformations? Watch the Webcast “Results from the Latest Deloitte CFO Signals Survey.”