India's Most Wanted IT Brands

Continued from page: 6

Sunday, September 17, 2006

Customer Relationship Management, Notebooks

Customer Relationship Management

The key brands competing in the CRM space include SAP, Oracle, Microsoft and Ramco. Of all these brands, SAP has the lion's share of the market and even has the highest brand momentum. Baan, on the other hand, is also a speed driven company, but lacks the mass. Oracle on the other hand lies somewhere in between.

Unfortunately, none of the CRM brands are persuasive enough to the CIOs. This can be seen from the persuasion graph wherein the top of mind recall for all the key brands is fairly high, but there is no intention to buy amongst the CIOs' minds. On a relative scale, SAP seems to be the most persuasive option, keeping both top of mind recall and likelihood of buying in mind.

Oracle, Microsoft, and Ramco follow this in that order.

When it comes to brand pull, Oracle seems poised to gain from others' losses. It's showing more switch-ins from competition than switch-outs. Microsoft, on the other hand, is in just the reverse situation. SAP is high on switch-in from competing brands, but it's also losing its customers to other brands.

Highest top of mind recall: SAP Highest current ownership: SAP Most likely to buy: SAP

Though the brand loyalty percentages weren't very high in this segment, what was interesting to note was that none of the brands were facing threats from the others. Instead, the CIOs did not really have an answer on which brand would they prefer to go for in the next six months. Their concern is completely justified since the decision to go for a CRM solution isn't instantaneous. It requires time and thinking. Perhaps that's why the respondents were unable to give an immediate answer on which brand would they like to purchase over the next six months. For instance, while SAP's brand loyalty was only 40%, the remaining 60% of the CIOs didn't really have an answer on which brand would they choose for the future. Likewise for the remaining brands.

SAP, Oracle and Baan all have the momentum, but the latter two need to leverage it to build up the ownership.

Notebooks

The competition in this category is largely between HP Compaq, IBM, Toshiba, and Dell, with a little bit of Acer. By the looks of it, HP-Compaq has the highest current ownership and as well as brand momentum to carry it forward. IBM/Lenovo is a little behind in brand momentum, despite a higher current ownership. Dell is close on the heels at number three, and has the brand momentum to take it higher in the future. Toshiba's brand momentum is slightly lower than its current ownership and needs work there.

When it comes to brand persuasion, Dell is slightly more persuasive than the rest, as the ratio of users who have it on top of their minds is exactly equal to those who're likely to buy it. Whereas in the case of the remaining brands, the likely to buy part is lower. Interestingly, however, Dell hasn't been able to convert persuasion to brand pull. Toshiba seems to have done a better job there as more users are likely to switch into it from competing brands than switch out.

For the rest, the number of switch-ins was lower than switch outs. Nevertheless, the competition between these four brands is very fierce. All four brands have their brand loyalties between 75 to 82%. Here, Dell was at 82% brand loyalty and seems to be facing a threat primarily from IBM/ Lenovo, as 9% of its existing customers had an inclination to move there.

Highest top of mind recall: IBM/Lenovo Highest current ownership: IBM/Lenovo Most likely to buy: HP

Toshiba with 75% brand loyalty had its competition divided between HP-Compaq and IBM/Lenovo. Intersingly, IBM/ Lenovo has a little bit of competition from all the other leading brands, with the most cut-throat competition coming from HP-Compaq and a minor 2% from Acer and Toshiba each. The same goes for HP-Compaq who has its existing customers wanting to shift to IBM/Lenovo, Dell and Toshiba.

Overall, HP-Compaq has the highest brand momentum, followed by IBM/Lenovo. Toshiba has good ownership, but needs more momentum, Dell has the momentum but needs to use it.

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