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TMA Raman
Chennai, Mar 1: Compaq Computer Corporation has worked out a strategic vision keeping in line with the global shift from technology to services in the IT industry.
Compaq has evolved a strategy to reach out to the customer with a well-designed programme. The company has worldwide drawn up a five-point agenda with service as the fulcrum of its programme. Compaq Services, the services providing outfit of the parent company, is pitching high targeting sales of $15 billion by the year 2002.
Key to achieving this level are plans to build brand loyalty, create opportunities for parties to sell and deliver the services, attract the best IT talent with a view to becoming an IT force to reckon with, and expand its share in the high growth market.
In Chennai, it flagged off the programme with emphasis on high availability services. The service promises a support plan from Compaq with all its expertise and strength for moving to Windows NT environment from Unix and for ensuring global connectivity 24 hours a day,ensuring back up in critical areas like technology, service and management so as to cut down the cost of downtime losses and generally ensuring through proper diagnostic tools that glitches in technology are taken care of and adequate support is provided through a high level of service and proper crisis management steps.As Compaq India's corporate marketing manager for customer services Sudipto Ghosh says: "The technology of the product is the same. The key differentiator in IT now is service."
Ghosh has some interesting statistics to back up his claim. A recent survey done by IDC India on the IT services sector indicates that India is poised for leap frogging into the big league from a market share of less than 10 per cent (in the Asia-Pacific region) to over 60 per cent by the year 2002.The survey also estimates that the Indian compounded annual growth rate for the IT services sector for four years between 1997 and 2,001 will be 22.6 per cent.
Given this scenario, it is not surprising that companies areincreasingly putting emphasis on providing service as something critical for the IT industry. The image that hardware companies are only interested in selling their boxes is giving way to one where companies are competing to provide total solutions. Customer focus has become the key to success in shoring up bottomlines.
According to Ghosh, Compaq takes a holistic approach to availability services for Windows NT designed to support the total life cycle of the system's solutions from planning and design, through to implementation, management and support.
Customers seek help in change management, whether upgrading operating systems or making a major technology shift. Managing such change successfully is essential to minimising risk.
To put through business critical services, Compaq has developed a portfolio of services designed for support of high availability Windows NT systems and applications that involve availability review, availability partnership, 24 hour-seven days a week hardware and softwaresupport and recover all disaster protection. These services are customised to take care of downtime problems in business critical applications.
In India, Compaq achieved a growth rate of around 27 per cent for the IT services sector in 1997-98 and is aiming at Rs 100 crore revenue from services by 1999-2000.
To achieve the goal, the company will source its expertise from strategic alliance partners of the parent company with IT leaders like Microsoft, Oracle, Novell, Intel, Lotus and Cisco. It has also set up scores of inventory and support centres, has trained and skilled professionals whose help can be sought online through worldwide hookups, and many packaged service products.
Copyright © 1999 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
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This story was printed from Net Express located at http://www.expressindia.com. Net Express provides a portal to India, with news from The Indian Express and The Financial Express along with sites on travel and tourism, the entertainment industry, the power sector, the environment and much more.
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