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Successful strategies for SMEs in the IT industry
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Successful strategies for SMEs in the IT industry The IT industry exhibits an increasing concentration of market share held by a few multinational players while at the same time witnessing another trend towards vertical and very specialised applications by smaller contestants who tap those market niches that are too small for the larger competitors. What are the most effective ways to increase your market share and value as a small player? Our experience working with small companies has shown that the first step is to define your product strategy – by identifying a niche where your application can bring value to a specific customer segment. As a result of this, in some cases, as a result of choosing a niche market strategy, your local market might be too small to find enough potential clients. That’s when you have to start thinking about expansion into other geographic markets. (Another reason for expanding might also be that your local market is saturated or another geographic location offers better ROIs than the local market). But how to develop your international market strategy? Where to get started? There are different options, one being to “piggy-back” on the marketing power of the main players: by creating powerful alliances with them and assisting you in effectively joining their network of global partners. It is clear, that this approach works only if your application/solution is working on their specific operating systems or platforms (to name a few, SAP, Microsoft or Oracle as examples for such global players) - and if you are able to create a “win-win” situation where the large players will increase their own revenues at the same time as you do. Be assured that if that is not the case, in particularly them not getting substantial additional revenue, they will not open their arms for you. Joining the large players does not work for everybody – since you might not have developed your product on a main-stream platform and you may be pursuing a different product strategy and philosophy, such as developing in Open Source or Linux. What are your options? There are many companies out there like yours – it’s just a question of identifying them and approaching them for creating new partnerships. Since one thing is clear – the fastest way to expand into new markets is by forging personalized partnerships with companies that have a compatible mindset, approach and philosophy. How to go about it? At iFact, many of our clients are based in the IT industry and/or want to market a new technology project across new markets. We assist you in choosing the market(s) that represent the best chances of meeting your corporate objectives (revenue increases, market share and profits) within your planning horizon. We also help you to build your commercialisation plan and we provide assistance during the implementation phase (Partner/distributor search; direct sales to key accounts). For more information on how we can help your company increase its revenues by forging new partnerships, please give me a call +1-514-735-9892 or write me an email to skerner@ifact-consult.com. Other questions? I am looking forward hearing from you! Related articles: Key challenges for expanding into new markets Perspectives on the North-American market potential |
Sabine Kerner, founder of iFact, has extensive experience in international business development, marketing and consulting acquired with international firms such as Apple Computer in California and Lotus Development in Germany. She assists her clients in developing and implementing cost-effective strategies for entering new markets and successfully ran international marketing and PR campaigns. 