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shobha
IT SERVICES
The growth in Information Technology (IT) industry is perhaps the fastest of all that within a span of a decade or so it has become a multi-billion dollar industry. There are small and big players in this industry, each one is trying to crave a niche for itself. There has been a recent spur, both globally as well as in India, in the use, demand and implementation of Information Technology.
IT Services became more important and that is where the industry and that is where the industry rests. Information Technology emerged, in the late Eighties, as a combination of several facets; hardware, software, and communications. Information Technology has suffered from a lack of infrastructure. Marketers of Information Technology failed to emphasize that services use has actually improved productivity and did not replace jobs.
A Multi-faceted Product
Information Technology (IT), being a product and service of recent origin, is perhaps still adjusting in the world of traditional marketing. It has, in itself, a complete range of marketing possibilities where we see product marketing through wholesale and retail outlets in the case of software packages on the one end and large turnkey projects encompassing huge geographical spreads, different systems communication lines and hardware products.
Large Product Range
Marketing of IT is further complicated by the exceptionally large product range it encompasses, such as, educational games targeted towards children, business tools used by office executives and offices, executive tools used increasingly for those who need to manage time and small amounts of information and data, areas of Artificial Intelligence have found their way into robotics which are increasingly being used to manufacture, financial applications and banking applications, and in India we see, more recently use o Information Technology in the stock market to help make the market more sensitive.
Emerging Marketing Mix
1. Application Software
2. Professional Services(both on-site and offshore)
3. Systems integration and Large turnkey projects
4. Maintenance services which include hardware, software etc.,
5. Education and Training
6. Technology oriented applications
7. Software Packages
Application Software
Application software belongs to that segment of the market which merges IT applications with specific sector segments. This has been very successfully done in segments such as banking, financial services, mining, power, steel, transportation and ports where the IT specialist has taken the expertise of the concerned sector and, with the help of sector specialists, designed system to help improve productivity of that particular sector. A good marketing strategy is to generate repeat orders from an existing application.
Professional Services
This has largely been an export oriented activity .Professional Services involves offering a variety of skills, specific to an individual, which can be utilized on projects either at overseas sites or offshore. The manner in which such an activity operates is due to the tremendous price advantage available to an industry currently in short supply of software personnel.
System Integration
A specialized segment of the industry comprises integrating systems and provides what are commonly known as turnkey solutions. This activity seems from the fact that there are multiple hardware vendors, multiple database choices, multiple applications software vendors, multiple application software available from different industry segments. System integration implies a “one stop shop” approach and requires a marketing capability and marketing profile which is vendor independent.
Maintenance Services
This segment is growing rapidly. It entails providing services for maintaining existing hardware and software. As users become dependent on computers and communication, maintenance services ensure the availability of maximum machine time. The reasons for the growth of this activity were two fold. Firstly, it became increasingly difficult for users to maintain a large profile of skills available at any one time to ensure that systems ran smoothly. Secondly, users found that their computer centres or the computing facilities they used took up too much of management time.
Education and Training
Quite naturally, shortage in the IT industry has made manpower critical. Training has become a very crucial component of the product mix. With emphasis on skills, training is not only at the entry level but enables constant updating of skills requiring either familiarity with a particular hardware operating system or may be an application. Training institutions, having a reservoir of manpower, integrate forward into ‘professional services and systems integrators’.
Technology Oriented Applications
Technology applications add another facet of complexity to the IT industry. The industry has had a history of very rapid advancement into different technologies. Such advancements could be in the type of hardware, the operating system new databases or technology covering from Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, Imaging and so forth. The explosion of technology in different fields makes it extremely difficult for any vendor to keep track of and invest in all technologies. From the market point of view, this implies that we will see IT companies being extremely segmented and catering to a very narrow niche of users.
Software Packages
The software packages are probably the most well- known to most users and cater to that end of the market which is most familiar to people in the industry or in marketing. This segment of the market is very competitive and given to fast changes. It requires developing a package, often a very broad- based software that can take on a range of applications that can be written on it and yet must be simple enough to be used by an uninitiated user. Software packages have been the largest in the software industry, but strategic alliances have crucial to this growth.
Bridging the Communication Gap
One of the biggest setbacks in the industry has been the existing communication gap between those who use software and systems and those who market them. The early growth of software saw aggressive, intelligent, and educated IT persons marketing systems around with a lot of jargon, many terms were need still new to the users of such technology. Managers, who would need to decide on the large investments in IT, were equally unaware. This led to a very uncomfortable situation where senior managers were not familiar with the technology or the jargon. Further they could not associate the costs and benefits of a product which was largely intangible in nature.
Niche Markets: The Only Option
Because of the resources constraint and the specialization mentioned earlier, it became virtually necessary for IT companies to identify in a much focused manner, the niche market. All marketing strategies would be associated with these niches. Barring software packages which cater to a much broader range of applications, or other applications and products, information technology caters to a very specific niche market. It is normally seen that advertising is not extensively used in promoting these niche markets. Being so narrow, often, word of mouth of a successful implementation within the niche is sufficient promotion.
