Channel marketing of IBM's software products; Tata Information systems Limited

Abstract

The Indian Information Technology industry is one of the fastest growing industries of the 90’s. The Indian governments policy of liberalization and subsequent reduction of tariffs for software and hardware has made way for the entry of some of the best companies in the international markets. In the 1980's the Indian IT industry focused mainly on the large corporate and business houses as computers were mainly used for large data processing and scientific applications. In the 1990’s computers have proliferated into low end applications such as office automation and as a major tool for communication. These new applications have changed not only the product profile and customer segments but also the distribution strategies of the IT companies. Last year 80% of the total sate made in the IT industry was through the channels and only 20% of the sale was made by the vendors directly showing a clear change in trend from the previous years, It is very evident that the key to success in addressing the lower end market segment which has a huge potential is an excellent distribution strategy. This project deals with three areas, in marketing IBM’s software products through different distribution channels Part I Classification of IBM’s software products. Part If Perceptions & Expectations of prospective Business Partners of TISL. Part III Channel Models for Marketing IBM’s Software Products. In the first part of the project the different software products were classified and categorized such that they are functionally related to each other. The two criteria for classification which were identified were the Software Application Area and the Software Performance category. The various application areas were Data Management, Application Development, Workgroup, System Software. The performance categories used were high, medium and low end Software categories ( Exhibit-2). The perceptions and expectations of prospective Business Partners were determined by means of a sample survey using a structured questionnaire. The prospective BP’s felt that Product information, Training and Technical inputs were the most important among the support services that they receive presently. They felt that networking and GUI tools have excellent future potential. In terms of selling software products they used direct selling & demonstrations very frequently and they felt that the most useful sales/marketing aids were Brochures & Catalogs followed by a Demo Software copy and Advertisements. Their expectations from their principals were that their principals should have excellent order processing and prompt delivery, should give them strong promotional support and their principals should carry a good product range with an established reputation.