Anthony Plewes surveyed a small consultation company in rapidly growing the development of the IT service market and how they competed with big companies.
The IT service market is huge, according to Gartner, 2003 reached 539 billion US dollars and is also expanded every year. The industry's growth rate last year is 6.2%, which is also made in the background of the IT budget without even decline.
Big companies like HP and Accenture have achieved rich profits in this growth. The top ten manufacturers have reached a turnover of 135 billion, IBM is 42 billion in revenue.
If you think this is just a big company, you are wrong. Thousands of small IT consulting companies and freelancers are also divided into this market, just like large multinational companies, they also have achieved good results. The growth of IT service markets exceeds GDP growth, regardless of major companies or small companies, this market is still healthy. Good days are now back.
After all of the Money Money Money Money Money and E-commerce are finished, all IT consulting companies have fought financial difficulties. Since the customer cuts the external IT cost, this market is shrinking. After 9/11, many agencies fired thousands of staff and contractors who have skilled skills within the budget for further atrophy. Now, in some areas, market confidence is resumed, and the company urgently needs to retrieve their skills they have.
Steve Watmough, an executive director of the IT consulting company in Chester, said: "The big company has no overall IT consultation. They have too many people. We provide them with some experts in some ways, such as changes Control and disaster recovery.
Focusing on a particular advantage market is a small consultation company to distinguish our main strategy. For example, in the field of software development, small companies can help big companies to deal with problems in their internal resources.
Another consulting company EXOFTWARE provides help for companies that want to change the software development method, ExOftware provides some "flexible" technology, such as dynamic system development methods and limit programming. ExOftware's director Priya Patel said: "These technologies can reduce development time. One of our customers shorten the software test cycle from 3 months to 2 weeks."
Some consulting companies have begun to do general consultation, but later discovering that the professional road is more effective. Bob Moul, the operation supervisor of the zeda consulting company, said it is more and more difficult to distinguish us with others, so we are now focusing on some special skills. This makes us advantage over some aspects, because Consulting companies are usually a project manager of some major projects. They need to find someone else to complete those projects, and this is the field of our focus. "
Although the same market is in a market, the small consulting company is generally competitive with different consultants. Part of the reason is that the two-faced business scale is different, and the other reason is that the working nature of the two is different.
Xantus's WATMOUGH said: "Over the past four years, the big consulting company has turned from the provider of direct providing services. So we turn your eyes to the providing suggestion market opportunities. We can also position themselves into an independent third-party institution because we It is not only to win the contract for yourself. "
Small companies are more strategic than big companies when dealing with IT issues. ExOftware's Patel said: "Our approach is different from the consultation company. We will not use a similar military approach and then put a large number of consultants. We think that there will be sequelae."
However, not all industry welcomes small consulting firm. The public sector is a major representative, and its procurement process never favors small companies.
Patel said: "There will be some thresholds in most public sector. If you want to participate in the bid, you have to cross these thresholds. Some thresholds are reasonable, but they are often conducive to big companies, small companies are excluded The private sector only has fewer regulations and simpler systems, you have more business more. "
Although small companies have found that in the bidding of the public sector, they are difficult to compete directly, they will also join in a way they cooperate with large companies. Establishing a partnership is an important way to do business in small companies. In this way, they can expand their scope of their skills. ZEDA and manufacturers and service providers form alliances when needed. Moul said: "We and the manufacturer's alliance is because we don't want to see the product. We will work together with the manufacturer. If you do it reasonable. For example, when a project 40% involves the product, 60% is time to service. "
Moul continued: "We also cooperate with other service providers. Many companies have weak items, and our core skills can be filled with this. For example, we are very in terms of application testing, so we can be Application developers with weaker backend tests. We help them test before the product is available.
For cost considerations, small companies generally do not face end users directly. Nigel Atkinson, the joint founder of the software service company NeoWorks, said: "We cooperate with some marketing and design agencies, or cooperate with other IT companies. Directly doing marketing for end users, it is too expensive for us."
Unfortunately, small IT consulting agencies are not like companies such as IBM have brand resources available. Therefore, they need to work hard to build trust relationships in their customers. This is especially important for newly created companies because they usually don't have any customer base.
WATMOUGH said: "If you want to enter this market, it is not easy. You have to build trust and accumulate experience. Trust is easy to build difficult. Small company is not losing the loss of trust, so every contract is very important to us. "
This makes it important to pay attention to the details when the small company is in customer service. Therefore, it is very important to select the right person, because once it makes mistakes, the company will no longer have a chance.
NEOWORKS's Atkinson said that their project groups use mutual inspection methods to ensure that each item is smooth. This will find problems at earlier. The interests of our employees should also be related to the project, which is also to determine what kind of project should be undertaken by the company.
Compared with large companies, smaller consultations are more personalized. Therefore, many small consultations have a cautious attitude towards expansion. WATMOUGH said: "We work at the CIO level, there are many relationships to be used for effective use. I think the ideal scale of the small consultation is less than 100 people, or around 50 people."
WATMOUGH continued: "The best way to expand while maintaining 'small' is to decompose the company into multiple operational levels and give them a certain autonomy."
NEOWORK's Atkinson even believes that small companies are smaller. He said: "10 to 15 people are the best scale, because people have more work schedules, team management such organizational issues will become a big trouble. Small scale can keep us well in response."
In summary, although the big consulting company occupies the dominant status in the IT service market, specializes in small consultations in a specific field still have achieved good results in the market.
