The Next Picture The overall spending on bandwidth and connectivity is still low, but the need for better connectivity is being felt. Today, the connectivity options for customers are multi-fold. However, two key trends are driving adoption of these solutions—easy manageability and reduction in TCO.
Methodology
The V&D-IDC Enterprise Communications Priorities ’07 is a joint study done by VOICE&DATA and IDC India. The survey has covered a sample size of 126 companies. The target segment of the study is large enterprises with minimum turnover of Rs. 200 crore. The 13 verticals broadly covered are: Manufacturing (Excluding Paper, pulp and allied products and Sugar), Pharmaceuticals, FMCG/Consumer Durables/Food & Beverages, Banking and Other Financial Services, Energy/Infrastructure/ Utilities, IT/ITeS, Media & Entertainment, Tourism (Airlines/Travel/Hospitality), Oil & Gas and Retail, Trading, Hospitals, and Image Processing.
The study was conducted in top 8 cities of India i.e. Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, Pune, Kolkatta and Ahmedabad as head offices of most of the large enterprises are located there, reaching out to the target respondent of the study CIO/CTO/IT heads or any other relevant person assigned by them.
Total 126 face-to-face interviews were done which was a mix of all the verticals as mentioned above with minimum quota for each. However all organizations were not able to respond to all the questions in the questionnaire, hence in some of the tables the base (no. of responses) is little less than 126. While presenting the vertical-wise analysis, findings have not been separately presented for Pharmaceuticals, Retail, Tourism, Trading and Hospitals verticals due to their low base hence total base of all the verticals will not add up to 126.
Though all the organizations in the sample were fairly large with minimum Rs. 200 crore turnover, it was also ensured that sufficient number of very large organizations such as turnover of Rs. 500 crore to Rs. 1,000 crore and more than Rs. 1,000 crore turnover could be covered.
While covering service providers, it was found that BSNL, MTNL, Airtel and VSNL figured prominently in the sample size of the companies. Others such as Reliance have not been presented in the satisfaction survey as their occurrence were found less in the sample as a primary service provider.
CIO was asked to rate the level of satisfaction on each of the parameters and sub-parameters on a four -point scale for various primary service providers. IDC India derived the scores of importance from the satisfaction score, which was used as a weight for each of the sub-parameters. To arrive at the overall satisfaction scores, IDC India measured satisfaction against each of these ‘importance’ parameters and arrived at a weighted score of satisfaction, on a maximum possible total of 100, which makes all the parameters and service providers comparable within their scope.
Compiled by IDC Team led by Shailendra Gupta and assisted by Satya Sundar Mohanty
For the large enterprises, it is most important to have a right mix of technologies, and integration of applications with the existing IT infrastructure of partners. Availability of manpower, presence of reliable communication systems to drive the applications across the network is also an issue with the enterprises. The preferred network architecture is centralized, thus enabling the company to quickly implement the changes in the system.
So what’s in store for 2008? Perhaps the emphasis will be for the CIOs to create a model to strengthen the relationship with the service providers to ensure that key business objectives are communicated, and relevant actions taken. Choosing a service provider with diligence is essential. It’s important that the outsourcing partner understands the business objectives of the client’s company. The time has come when enterprises expect service providers to put on multiple hats, and to be able to transform themselves as complete end-to-end service providers, delivering high on quality and service support.
In response the service providers have already begun innovating with solutions that gel well with business strategies of the enterprise customers. The challenge before the enterprise will be then to judiciously select service providers with the best-fit solution, that is flexible enough to transform and have good understanding of the enterprise’s specific requirements.
Malovika Rao malovikar@cybermedia.co.in Graphix: Paras Jain
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