IT Services Industry Overview
From data protection hurdles to retraining IT talent and discovering new revenue streams, companies in the IT services industry face various challenges. Also, the rapidly changing regulatory landscape and business needs are making it difficult for companies in the IT services industry to keep up with their competitors and deal with challenges coming their way. As such, companies in the IT services industry are finding it vital to keep a constant watch on their competitors’ strategies and make changes in their business models accordingly.
This success story highlights how our competitive intelligence solution helped a company in the IT services industry to meet their immediate priorities and attain faster time to market. In addition, this article explains how the client was able to outpace their competitors and enhance market share by 22%.
Business Challenge
The client is an IT service provider based out of Germany.
Our client, an IT services provider, encountered a steady decline in profit margins for two consecutive years. In addition, they faced immense competition from local players in Germany. In order to enhance their market share, they wanted to gauge their competitors’ strategies and understand their business models. In addition, the client wanted to understand how their company measured up against the top IT services companies in Germany. As such, they approached the experts at Infiniti Research to leverage their expertise in offering competitive intelligence solution.
Other key objectives that the client wanted to achieve by leveraging Infiniti’s competitive intelligence solutions were:
IT services industry challenge #1: New security threats
New security threats posed severe challenges for the client and necessitated them to stay extra vigilant to tackle the challenges before they impact the organization’s business operations. The client, therefore, wanted to identify technologies and processes leveraged by their competitors to tackle security threats in the industry.
IT services industry challenge #2: Skill gap
As technology roadmaps are fundamentally driven by team capacity and bandwidth, recruiting and retaining skilled labor was becoming imperative for the company. However, the client faced challenges in finding skilled workers and delivering projects on time. As such, with Infiniti’s help, the company in the IT services industry wanted to find the right business partners to outsource their projects at times of immediate requirements.
IT services industry challenge #3: Balancing risks and rewards of AI
Although AI (artificial intelligence) has opened up huge opportunities for companies operating in the IT services industry, they have also brought about major challenges and industry risks. By leveraging Infiniti’s competitive intelligence engagement, the client wanted to identify strategies undertaken by their competitors to balance the risks and rewards of AI.
IT services industry challenge #4: Implementation of regulated Privacy protections
Implementation of user privacy rights was becoming imperative for companies in the IT services industry. However, balancing the ownership and rights of end-users with technology platforms necessitated refactoring of many systems. The client, therefore, wanted to identify how the top IT services providers implemented regulated privacy protection and ensured the safety of their user-data.
Solutions Offered
Our experts conducted a competitive intelligence study of the German IT services industry. In the initial phase of the engagement, the experts conducted company profiling and analysis, where they analyzed the client’s top ten competitors. The factors such as their current market position, end-users, and profit margins were analyzed.
In the second phase, our experts conducted a risk assessment study of the German IT services industry, where they analyzed the operational and security risks facing companies in the German IT services industry. By analyzing risks in advance, the client was able to take risk management approaches to tackle them.
The next phase involved a competitive benchmarking study, where the experts compared the client’s service offerings with that of their competitors. This phase of the engagement helped the client to understand their strengths and weaknesses in comparison to their competitors. Additionally, the client was able to identify areas where their competitors were doing well and struggling.
The final phase involved a competitor analysis engagement, which involved a thorough analysis of the current competitive landscape in the German IT services industry. Also, the experts helped the client to identify strategies and processes undertaken by the top companies in the German IT services industry to ensure timely delivery of projects, deal with rising industry risks, and ensure the safety of user data.
Results Obtained
The insights obtained from the competitive intelligence engagement helped the client to understand the competitive landscape in the German IT services industry. Also, they were able to identify technologies and processes leveraged by their competitors to tackle security and operational risks in the industry. Our experts also helped the client to identify the top IT outsourcing companies to help them at the time of immediate requirements.
In addition, the experts recommended the client to implement an AI-based protection system to secure the company from new security threats. They even implemented regulated privacy protection to protect user data and information. The IT services company was able to meet their immediate priorities and attain faster time to market. This helped them to reduce operational cost by 13% and enhance market share by 22%.
