What's Up - Editorial

Volume 10 - May 2005

We have almost reached the half way mark of 2005; companies in India have announced their results for the last financial year, while global companies have declared their first quarter results. All in all, the global outsourcing market continues to grow, and Indian first tier companies have shown good growth. Mid tier companies have had mixed results. The consolidation trend continues and both in a global and Indian context, there have been several mergers and acquisitions.

With demand no longer an issue, companies are back to addressing important questions

How do I differentiate my company and my products and services in the market?
How can I become a preferred player in the market category I play in
How can I reach out to a diverse and geographically far flung audience?
In order to scale up, how can I attract the right profile of people to my organization?

Clearly, brand building comes to the forefront yet again. It is well known that strong brands characterize successful companies, but emerging and mid sized companies in particular often feel that brand building is expensive and beyond them.

It is Prayag’s view that every company, from a startup to a well established company, can embark on brand building initiatives. In our proprietary framework, derived through empirical data as well as our consulting experience, we have identified a brand building road map for technology companies at various stages in their evolution.

Mid tier companies should consider online brand building programs - they are easy to implement, cost effective and allow the company to reach out to spread out audiences at the required frequency.

We spoke to Susan Odell, VP, Techtarget, to get her perspectives on this topic. The interview is featured in the Future Gazers section.

While on the topic of mid tier companies, it is mandatory that the top management, preferably the CEO, spearheads the brand building effort. Most often, however, this is not the case. CEO led branding has led to the success of numerous technology companies across the globe – Microsoft is a great example across the border, while Infosys comes to mind closer home. But, is this strategy without its pitfalls? “In the Eye” brings to focus the importance of a CEO led brand building strategy for growing companies, while suggesting ways to balance this effort with institutional efforts over time.

One area that companies pay the least attention to, till it is quite late, is marketing their company to prospective and existing employees. Indeed, people branding is often the most neglected area in the brand building strategy of most organizations. This has to however assume more importance as people are the key to success in knowledge industries, and the demand for good people is going up exponentially with companies across the world making a beeline for offshore destinations.

One company that has thought, and hence acted differently, in this regard is Mindtree Consulting. Since its inception, the company has focused on nurturing talent as well as creating a strong “people led brand”. In our “Best and the rest” feature, we talk about the interesting and successful employment practices of Mindtree Consulting.

In the deal beat section, we cover some of the significant and interesting deals that were done in the last quarter.

In Top line Bottom line, we examine whether deal sizes have changed in the last one year, and what the implications of the same are.

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