ITSMA Europe Defines 2004 Agenda

8 January 2004—Heading into the fast-changing economic landscape across Europe, marketers face a clear set of challenges in stimulating results for their businesses. Buyers remain cautious and sceptical about IT investments; economic conditions vary widely across the continent; and marketing organisations themselves continue to operate with limited resources and conflicting pressures.

Perhaps most important, the European Union is set to grow substantially with the addition of around 200 million people from 10 new member countries. This will stretch the range of economic performance even further and could dramatically alter the nature and scale of demand for (and supply of) IT services and solutions.

In this context, ITSMA Europe is focusing its 2004 agenda on five main priorities to support marketing leadership and success:

1. Driving growth through marketing-led business strategy
2. Demonstrating brand differentiation
3. Optimising the portfolio and designing innovative offers and value propositions
4. Building account-based, relationship development programmes
5. Continuing to demonstrate the value of marketing

Our strategy work revolves around the in-depth research and experience led by ITSMA Vice President Philip Oliver, former head of strategy for IBM Global Services. Philip is already working with member companies to explore different approaches to linking marketing with business strategy and to strengthen the role marketers can play in guiding senior management through the options available and the decisions to take with all-too-scarce resources. Look for several presentations and a new report on our research on this critical topic.

Positioning your business to stand out from competitors and become more attractive to target clients remains challenging in a crowded and sceptical market. Few companies do this well today, and ITSMA Europe will invest substantial resources this year to exploring how best to demonstrate brand differentiation in today’s environment. A special focus in this area relates to internal marketing and brand development, which is critical for services and solutions organisations.

Knowing what to offer clients in different parts of Europe requires a constant focus on optimising and integrating the services portfolio. This, in turn, demands a much greater level of customer intelligence and customer intimacy than is common in our market. Our 2004 programme will highlight this issue and include events specifically addressing the needs of midmarket companies and buyers in the public sector. Our “voice of the customer” research provides further support for companies looking to improve offer development and portfolio rationalisation.

Marketing cutbacks in recent years, combined with a shift on the customer side toward buying solutions to business issues, have inspired more collaborative efforts across marketing, sales, and delivery to build account-based relationship development programmes. The overall goals are to focus on the right clients, gain the attention of decision makers and influencers, craft the most compelling value propositions for each client, and build trust in your consistent ability to deliver top-quality solutions and business results. Associate Director Sara Sheppard leads ITSMA Europe’s programme to explore best-practice techniques and help member companies improve relationships and increase their share of wallet with priority clients.

Finally, many of us have developed systems to measure and quantify this value. But how effectively are we using these systems to refine and improve the effectiveness of our programmes and communicate the value of marketing internally? The last core element of our agenda for 2004 highlights measuring and communicating marketing results to demonstrate value and ensure continuous improvement.

Looking across the five priorities, all of which are echoed by leading marketers in IT services, I'm struck by the need for each of them to be integrated with the others—easy to say but difficult to achieve with the scale and geographic spread of many European organisations. Marketing planning must be integrated with business strategy; separate marketing teams must integrate further with each other to improve the programme efficiency and secure better returns for the business; and marketing people must integrate with sales, operations, and partners more effectively to deliver a seamless, consistently branded experience to the customer that builds commitment and trust over time. The ITSMA Europe Annual Forum in May will explore the whole issue of integration and provide a great opportunity to catch up on the latest thinking, examples, and experience with all five priority issues. We hope to see you there!

—Bev Burgess, info@itsma.com

For more information on how ITSMA Europe can help your organisation grow and succeed in 2004, contact our main office in London at +44 (0) 1892 523060 or by email at info@itsma.com.

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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.