Marketing Technology Services in the New Millennium:
Conference Summary

ITSMA Europe held its inaugural forum, Marketing Technology Services in the New Millennium (20-21 June 2001), in London with resounding success! The forum brought together senior marketing managers from all walks of life in technology services to establish and discuss the current hot topics and challenges for European services marketers.

Primary Themes
Two themes ran throughout the forum:

• Client-centric marketing is the only way. It is easy to say that services marketers have too many responsibilities, yet they really have just one: to establish, maintain, and enhance client relationships. Client focus should underpin every business activity, and services marketers must take a central role in promoting this focus and driving it internally as well as externally. How else do you retain global brand recognition? How else do you achieve growth when the economy takes a downturn? Or walk that extra mile to help your clients prepare for their future? In general, most marketers need to do a better job of communicating with clients, adopting an "outside-in" approach that places client needs, values, and priorities front and center. Too often marketers speak only the language of the provider.

• Internal marketing represents a fundamental challenge to all technology services organizations, especially when a firm is undertaking a major change such as a rebranding, as with Accenture, or moving a global e-business programme online, as with IBM Global Services. Establishing an internal communications plan within the overall marketing programme is absolutely critical to any programme's ultimate success. Clearly identifying responsibility for key internal audiences is similarly essential to affecting the behavioural change required for any important new business initiative—and to ensuring that client focus remains central to the whole company, not just the marketing team itself.

Presentation Highlights
The forum featured presentations from top marketers at Accenture, IBM Global Services, Hewlett-Packard, the Global Future Forum, Ericsson, and Microsoft. Each presenter shared insights and recommendations on such issues as services branding, Web marketing, customer experience, thought leadership, and services channel management.

Specific highlights include the following.

Launching (and then relaunching) a Global Brand
Charles Doyle, global director of marketing and communications at Accenture, demonstrated how ingenious and tenacious Accenture needed to be to replace a highly recognised brand (Andersen Consulting), developed over 11 years, with a new one in just six months. Doyle reviewed the evolution of the brand and discussed how Accenture balanced global consistency with cultural flexibility during the brand roll-out.

The Web Marketing Journey
Robert Pearce, senior manager of marketing for EMEA at IBM Global Services, took the forum audience through a brief history of interactive marketing at IBM Global Services. Pearce explained how a balance of global management and local flavour gradually created a successful Web initiative to position the Global Services brand and generate sales leads across Europe.

Total Customer Experience at Hewlett-Packard
Rob Biggin, marketing director at Hewlett-Packard Europe, explained how HP's new Total Customer Experience model has highlighted critical opportunities to enhance client relationships by tracking interactions at every stage within the sales and services life cycle.

Thought Leadership Marketing
Christine Carroll, CEO of the Global Future Forum, posed a question to the audience: How do you move from being a "doer" to a "thinker"? In answer, Christine explained the journey that Unisys has taken to establish the Global Future Forum, an independent organization dedicated to helping companies extend their strategic planning horizons. The Forum will concentrate on bringing together some of the world's best futurist thinkers to explore future world scenarios and the global impact of technology.

Marketing Services for Growth in a Downturn Market
Paul Collinge, vice president of marketing and strategic business development at Ericsson, explained how Ericsson Global Services' marketing strategy of focusing almost exclusively on sales and sales support has enabled the firm to adapt to this downturn and maintain high growth in its services business.

Balancing a Direct/Indirect Services Model with Enterprise Customers
Sara Sheppard, group manager of enterprise services marketing for Microsoft, discussed the challenge of taking on greater direct responsibility for services to enterprise customers while maintaining strong relationships with established partners that continue to serve as the primary Microsoft services providers.

Along with the presentations and discussions, faculty from ITSMA and Cranfield School of Management led a daylong workshop on using a customer experience orientation to help integrate sales and marketing processes and deliver high-revenue-generating relationships.

—Melanie Oakley

For more information on the presentations or workshop at the ITSMA Europe Inaugural Services Marketing Forum, please contact us on [44] 1892 523060 or via e-mail to info@itsma.com.

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.