ITSMA Identifies Leaders in EMEA Telecom Service Provider Market

Cisco, IBM, and Nortel lead in awareness and favorability as buyers look to boost profitability, acquire new customers, and reduce costs

LEXINGTON, Massachusetts—May 24, 2006—ITSMA, a membership community that helps companies market and sell technology services and solutions, today announced the publication of its new Brand Tracking Study: The Telecom Service Provider Market in the EMEA Region. Based on data gathered from 301 senior IT/network and business executives across 28 countries in the EMEA region, the report finds Cisco, IBM Global Services, and Nortel at the top of the list for unaided awareness and preference for network rollout and support services. Cisco, Accenture, and Ericsson top the unaided awareness list for network professional services.

“The EMEA market is an undisputedly demanding market to play in,” said Per Kristiansson, Services Marketing and Business Development Director, Lucent Technologies. “This study helped to clarify Lucent’s positioning relative to our competitors and helped our marketing team focus on the right areas for thought leadership that will improve awareness with our target market.”

Buyers Want Guaranteed Service Levels

To improve customer relationships and grow their businesses, network services firms must understand customer priorities and turn them into relevant value propositions. According to the study, buyers’ top goals in purchasing services from outside vendors are to:

• Improve profitability
• Acquire new customers, generate new sources of revenue
• Reduce operational expenses
• Improve quality of service

Further, study respondents were asked to rate the importance of nine selected network services firm attributes. The three most important attributes are:

• Guarantees service levels, delivers what is promised
• Understands the customer’s business needs
• Has highly skilled professionals, employs the best talent

ITSMA’s gap analysis shows that the networking services industry as a whole is falling short of expectations in these three critical areas.

Understand how Buyers Differ in Different Parts of the Region

The report shows that buyers in the different EMEA regions have very different expectations. For example, implementing advanced techniques and services is less important to Western European respondents than to those in Central & Eastern Europe and MEA/Central Asia. The in-depth analyses in the study indicate how to develop winning differentiation strategies based on buyer expectations across the EMEA regions.

“Network services firms operating in the EMEA region must establish visible differentiation based on what their individual customer bases and target prospects want from them,” said Michael Longy, research business development director at ITSMA Europe. “This study provides very useful customer data that can serve as the foundation of an effective differentiation strategy.”

For more information about this study, see http://www.itsma.com/research/abstracts/bnw005.htm

About ITSMA
ITSMA specializes in helping companies market and sell services and solutions more effectively. As a membership organization, we work with the world's leading technology, communications, and professional services providers to generate increased demand, strengthen customer relationships, and improve brand differentiation. ITSMA members include business leaders such as Accenture, BT, Cisco, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Microsoft, SAP, and Tata Consultancy Services, among others. Our comprehensive research, consulting, and training on topics including ITSMA Account-Based Marketing ^SM, Brand Positioning, and Solutions Development provide the insight and experience companies need to improve business results. ITSMA is based near Boston, and has offices in London and Tokyo. Learn more at www.itsma.com.