Given the sustained downturn, IT services buyers are relying more than ever on services vendors with which they have past experience. But that doesn’t mean that vendors have it easy with existing clients. Buyers are also requiring greater financial validation of vendor promises, conducting more ROI and TCO analyses, and bringing more executives into the decision-making process. Only one third of buyers maintain strong loyalty to existing services vendors.

How Customers Choose IT Services: Insights into Winning More Business provides detailed data and analysis on how buyers are making services purchase decisions in the current environment.

Based on interviews with 200 IT and business unit decision-makers from organizations with revenue greater than $200 million, the report explores such critical issues as the services vendor selection process, sources of influence, and customer switching behavior.

How Customers Choose IT Services focuses on four priority industry segments for IT services vendors—financial services, government, manufacturing, and life sciences—and digs deeply into four key topics:

• Vendor selection: how customers learn about services vendors, sources of recommendations and references, sources of influence, and evaluation and selection criteria
• Purchase decisions: what types of people are involved in the decision process, who has the ultimate sign off authority, and how the purchase process has changed over the last 12 months
• ROI and TCO analysis: how often buyers require these types of purchase justification, who prepares the analyses, use of ROI and TCO analysis after service delivery, and the extent to which buyers achieve projected returns
• Vendor relationships: satisfaction rates with existing vendors, favorability toward vendors, likelihood of switching vendors, and primary reasons for switching to new vendors

The report includes analysis by industry, respondents’ roles (IT vs. business executive), type of service (professional services, hardware maintenance, and software support), and company size.

In the wake of the downturn, marketers can use the report’s data and analysis to fine tune marketing programs and better address the priorities and needs of today’s IT services buyers.

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