Dear Readers,

Happy summer from ITSMA - how time flies! To SUBSCRIBE a friend or to UNSUBSCRIBE, simply send me an e-mail at kzina@itsma.com. We would also appreciate hearing any other comments or suggestions that you have, so simply press Reply and let us know what you think. Thanks and have a great month! 

-Kristin Zina, Manager, Public Relations and Member Communications, Editor of ITSMA's E-ZINE

IN THIS ISSUE

WHAT'S HOT:

  ITSMA's 2000 Services Marketing Excellence (SME) Awards: Application Deadline June 30th!

Upcoming Services Marketing Events: Sign up online and receive a 5% reduced fee!

  June 27, 2000: Exclusive Breakfast Briefing: for Members Attending Dataquest's ServiceTrends

  July 27-28, 2000: Building a Market-Focused Services Strategy Workshop with Dr. Lynn Phillips

  August 15-16, 2000: ITSMA's Annual Services Sales Forum

Next Online Briefing:
  June 22, 2000: Services Sales Effectiveness: Closing the Sales and Marketing Gap

Member Voices: Services Marketing Skills

Industry News:
  ITSMA Reaches 150 Corporate Members
  E-Business Consulting Is a Big Business, Too

A View from the President's Office

WHAT'S HOT:

ITSMA's 2000 Services Marketing Excellence (SME) Award Applications Due June 30th!!

Do you believe your services organization excels in one or more of the following categories?

• e-Marketing Excellence

• Increasing Services Sales Effectiveness

• Building the Services Brand

• New Services Innovation

If so, complete and submit one or more of ITSMA's 2000 Services Marketing Excellence (SME) applications. This is our third annual awards program recognizing the best in services marketing organizations. The SME program is a great opportunity for you and your company to be recognized. Past winners have included: Andersen Consulting, Cisco, EMC, Kodak, Lucent, IBM, Hewlett Packard, and EDS, among others.

SME awards will be presented at ITSMA's annual Conference and Symposium to be held October 2-4, 2000 in Monterey, California. Submissions are being accepted until June 30, 2000. For further information, please visit ITSMA's Website or contact Stacey Glazer at +1-781-862-8500 Ext.36. 

Upcoming Services Marketing Events

Sign up online at www.itsma.com and receive a 5% reduced fee!     [TOP OF PAGE]

June 27, 2000: Exclusive Breakfast Briefing at Dataquest ServiceTrends: Marketing Services in the New Economy

ITSMA will hold an exclusive breakfast briefing for member companies during Dataquest's upcoming ServiceTrends Conference in Boston at the Sheraton Hotel on Tuesday, June 27 from 7:00 a.m. to  8:15 a.m., to present findings from:

• ITSMA's E-Business Brand Awareness Research: What Buyers Are Saying About Leading E-Business and E-Services Solutions Providers

• ITSMA's survey of over 1,700 services sales reps: Bridging the Sales and Marketing Gap

Register online for the breakfast briefing now.

We will also hold private sessions throughout the day on, Tuesday, June 27. Please contact Paul Gates at pgates@itsma.com to schedule time with members of the ITSMA team.

July 27-28, 2000: Building a Market-Focused Services Strategy: Featuring Dr. Lynn Phillips, Executive Educator and Former Faculty Member at U.C. Berkeley and Stanford Business Schools.

Building a Market-Focused Services Strategy is one of ITSMA's most highly-rated and well-attended events. It is designed to help services marketers deal with many of their biggest challenges, including defining and delivering better value to their current customers, attracting new customers with new value offerings, and performing activities required to provide or communicate value to their customers more effectively and efficiently. This event will take place at the Fairmont Copley Plaza, Boston, Massachusetts.

August 15-16, 2000: Services Sales Forum 

Part of being successful at leveraging the sales channel is understanding all the factors that come into play that influence the behavior of a sales agent from the compensation and measurement system to the selling methodology and sales calendar. ITSMA has orchestrated this two-day event to address these issues by leveraging the in-depth day-to-day experience of leading professional services marketing practitioners with the insights of two services sales and marketing executives who have "been there, done that" in a very successful manner. The Forum will take place at the Fairmont Copley Plaza, Boston, Massachusetts.

Register for any ITSMA event by calling Jeff LaVoie at +1-888-ITSMA92, Ext. 38, or +1-781-862-8500, Ext. 38; or register online for a reduced rate.

ITSMA 2000 Events Calendar

Next Online Briefing  [TOP OF PAGE]

June 22, 2000, 12:00-1:00 p.m. EST Closing the Sales and Marketing Gap
Complimentary for Services Sales Effectiveness (SSE) Program Subscribers 

Sales and marketing organizations share a common goal: Generate profitable revenue while maintaining the highest levels of customer satisfaction. Why, then, are these two groups often at odds? Join Julie Schwartz, Vice President of Research as she presents results from ITSMA's latest survey of almost 1,800 services sales representatives to discuss how to improve sales and marketing effectiveness. Explore the issues, obstacles, and opportunities from both groups' perspectives. If you are not an SSE subscriber but would like to join this briefing, you can sign up for $595. This amount will be deducted from your subscription fee if you choose to participate in the program.

Register online for the briefing now.

Please visit us online to view the technical requirements needed to participate in ITSMA's online briefings. For visitors who register for the briefing, confirmation and downloading directions will be forwarded to you within 24 to 48 hours prior to the briefing.

Last month's online briefing, Cause-Related Marketing: Leveraging the Power of Community Connection, with Rob Leavitt, is now available online.

Member Voices: Services Marketing Skills   [TOP OF PAGE]

Each month we ask members to sound off on a critical services marketing issue, and we print a selection of their responses.

THIS MONTH'S QUESTION:  "What skills are required to be a successful services marketer today?" 

Makarand Teje, Marketing Manager, North American Operations, Wipro Technologies: "It takes multi-dimensional skills to be a successful IT services marketer in the new millennium. Ability to comprehend the changes which the Internet is bringing to the overall business environment and specific to marketing function; to deal with complex matrix organization structures effectively and continue to keep focus on three most important constituents to which marketing activities need to be targeted: 1. The customer, 2. The shareholder, and 3. The employee." For more information on Wipro, visit http://www.wipro.com/.

Brenda Balducci, Director, Installed Base Management, Siemens ICN, Inc.: "Service Marketers need to have technical knowledge and comfortability to talk with the IT Managers about data net communications. Five to 10 years ago they were only talking telephony to the Telecommunications Managers. They also need to be able to sell advanced services beyond the traditional hardware services we have sold in the past." For more information on Siemens, visit http://www.siemens.com/.

ANSWER NEXT MONTH'S MEMBER VOICES QUESTION: "Should marketing report to sales, or should sales report to marketing?"

Answer this question by simply sending an e-mail to Kristin Zina, Editor of the ITSMA E-ZINE and Manager of Member Communications at ITSMA, at cearnst@itsma.com, or visit Member Voices, where you can also view past months' questions and answers. Let us know what you think of this feature. Thanks! 

Industry News   [TOP OF PAGE]

ITSMA Reaches 150 Corporate Members

"We are very excited about the addition of so many exciting companies to our membership," said David C. Munn, president of ITSMA. "The Internet economy is being driven by technology and services providers. We see services marketers playing a leadership role in helping build brand awareness and generate demand for their firms in this new world. Over the last five years, we've seen services marketing become a valued profession and it has been incredibly rewarding for us to help such a wide range of firms increase the impact from their services marketing programs."

-Kristin Zina<cearnst@itsma.com>

E-Business Consulting is a Big Business, Too 

In the race to join the world of e-commerce, most Fortune 1000 corporations turn to an expert.

Companies, both big and small, are spending millions of dollars on e-marketing, customer relationship management, order fulfillment, personalization, custom software and, of course, a little creativity. Most firms don't have in-house expertise, so they reach out for technical know-how.

Getting those dollars are a growing number of e-business professionals, ranging from global consultants such as Andersen Consulting, Ernst & Young, PricewaterhouseCoopers and KPMG Peat Marwick, to boutique firms such as AnswerThink, Sapient and Razorfish.

This is a lucrative, but fragmented market. Forrester Research, a technology firm in Cambridge, Mass., estimates e-business services will double to $19.5 billion in revenue this year.

Julie Schwartz, vice president of research at ITSMA, an information technology service marketing association, said her firm's surveys show IBM has the highest brand awareness. "IBM has spent lots of money to position itself in this market,'' she said.

Lou Gerstner, IBM's chief executive and a former McKinsey & Co. consultant, began steering the company down this path some five years ago, realizing the potential that the real money on the Internet was in business-to-business transactions. Last year, 37% of IBM's corporate revenue came from its Global Services division.

Schwartz says IBM ranked highest in a brand awareness survey conducted last November. Its rank was identical in the firm's first survey, done six months earlier.

The next tier of key firms is crowded, Schwartz says. It includes Microsoft, Andersen Consulting, EDS, Redwood Shores-based Oracle, Palo Alto-based Hewlett-Packard, KPMG, Compaq Computer, and Ernst & Young.

Click here, for the full text of this article.

If you would like more information on ITSMA's Brand Study, please contact Paul Gates at pgates@itsma.com.

A View from the President's Office 

"Over the last five years, services marketing has advanced from a fairly tactical role to one at the CXO level. The impact that services marketers can have is finally starting to be rewarded. With the expanded title comes increased responsibility. Leading services marketers in the new economy will need to develop their skills in three critical areas: brand building, online and e-marketing, and what we call accountable marketing." 
-Dave Munn, President and CEO, ITSMA

Dave would love to hear from anyone who would like to discuss any of these skills further. davemunn@itsma.com

***Reproduction or disclosure in whole or in part to other parties shall be made according to the ITSMA Citation Policy. Reproduction prohibited. 

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About ITSMA
ITSMA specializes in helping companies market and sell services and solutions more effectively. As a membership organization, we provide research, consulting, and training to the world's leading technology, communications, and professional services providers to generate increased demand, strengthen customer relationships, and improve brand differentiation. ITSMA is based near Boston, and has offices in London and Tokyo. Learn more at www.itsma.com.