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Which IT brands come to the top of your mind without giving a second thought? Which ones do you currently own? And which ones are you most likely to buy in the near future? These three questions form the basis of our survey, and help us find our readers' favorite IT brands. Through this story, we further amplify that message so that all our readers can make more informed purchase decisions.
This is the second year that we're doing the Users' Choice Awards survey for the SME segment (after having done the awards for large and very large enterprises for over a decade). While there are numerous definitions of SME, our definition is companies having 100 to 1000 employees. We've also noticed that the IT requirements of organizations above and below the mid-spot, viz. 500 employees can vary dramatically. That's why in our survey, we've captured, analyzed and reported their requirements separately, i.e. we've determined the favorite IT brands of organizations with 100-499 employees and of organizations with 500 to 1000 employees separately. That's what you'll get to read in the pages to follow.
5 trends in IT buying behavior
Apart from asking the three questions above to determine our users' favorite IT products and services, we also try to get into the reasons for their choice. This gives us some very useful insights about the mindsets of IT purchase decision makers of Indian SMEs. Here are some that we discovered this time:
1. Low awareness level about choices in IT: This is a very clear trend we noticed from the survey results. We asked our users about which IT brands did they currently own across different categories, and which ones were they likely to buy? In many categories, users were not willing to stick with their existing brand, but were also not sure about which other brand to shift to. This is possibly because the users are not aware of the other choices that are available to them.
2. Product reliability is the topmost reason for choosing any product or service: Apart from asking users their brand preference, we also tried to dig into the reasons they own or are likely to buy different IT products and services. Here, we asked them to choose from four reasons-brand value, product reliability, initial price, and after sales service/support. In this, we discovered that a majority of the votes went in favor of product reliability. The second reason for choosing a particular product or service was brand value. This further reflects lack of awareness of tech alternatives, so the users end up going with the brands that they've heard of.
3. Local software players and in-house built software are losing out to branded products: Last year, we noticed that the known software brands did not come out as clear users' choice in some of the categories. Users either went for a local ISV's custom built solution, or developed something inhouse themselves. This year however, we've noticed a change. Branded software players are clearly coming out on top.
4. Strong brands don't lose their shine even if they change hands: Another interesting thing we've observed from not only this year's survey, but from most of our previous years' surveys is that strong brands don't lose their shine even after changing multiple hands. In this fast paced IT industry, many IT companies or strong brands get acquired by others. But despite being acquired, these brands don't lose their shine and continue to emerge on people's preference list. Companies who bought these brands should capitalize on this by letting those brands thrive.
5. After sales service/support is the last reason for choosing IT products and services: Strange as this may sound, but respondents to our survey didn't really give this as the top reason for choosing any IT product or service for the future. Even though we all realize that buying a product or service is just the first step. You would require support throughout the life of this product or service, and the quality of support offered by the vendor matters a lot in such a situation. Everyone today has a couple of horror stories to talk about vendor support issues, but in our survey, the respondents didn't really give this a priority.
What's different this time?
Apart from our regular survey to find out IT brand preferences across different products and services categories, this time, we also tried to determine the overall best IT brand, as well as the top IT brands across hardware, software, services, and networking segments. You can find out more about how we decided upon these winners by reading the survey methodology.
Also read...
Survey Methodology: 435 IT decision Makers Interviewed