CIOTechOutlook >> Magazine >> June - 2013 issue

Know the Pulse of your Customer

By

This time, while listening to Syntel visionary Bharat Desai's thoughtful keynote at TiEcon, hosted in Santa Clara, I was also agreeing to his statement. Bharat said, "You have to identify an underserved market segment. You have to decide that you would be good at it, commit to it and then go and do it. To be successful in any business, you have to identify who your customers are. Your customers have to think about you often; you have to be convinced that what you offer is going to be extremely important, relevant and dear to them. Once you identify that niche and you have the confidence in your segment, then you have to relentlessly focus on it without worrying about what others are saying."
I think this is exactly what is missing among Indian entrepreneurs today. Resonance of this statement in the back of their mind every now and then will really help them build their products and services. If the entrepreneurs in Indian IT Healthcare industry can take it very seriously and go to the market, they can grow even further.

For instance, the Indian healthcare sector is estimated to reach $100 billion by 2015, growing by 20 percent. Moreover, healthcare providers in India plan to spend $1.05 billion on IT products and services in 2013, a seven percent rise over 2012, says Gartner. Though the numbers look rosy, the Indian Healthcare IT solution providers have still not maximized the opportunity.

The Indian IT services firms, especially healthcare IT solution providers need to reshape their businesses if they are to continue to grow at the rates experienced over the last decade, as traditional markets and service offerings reach maturity. Today cost cutting, although critical in outsourcing contracts, is no longer the main reason why suppliers are chosen and innovation will be the key.

Innovations always sound good in retrospect, after they have worked, and in isolation, when all the surrounding barriers to change do not have to be taken into account. In the current scenario, lack of consensus among players in a complex system is one of the biggest barriers to innovation, which we need to break it and come out. Like I said earlier, we need to understand our customer i.e., the major IT requirements of the Healthcare industry.
For this issue, we had deep discussions with the CIOs in the healthcare industry about their expectations from entrepreneurs and have put together some of the CIOs' perspectives in 'Meet the CIO' column. Moreover, we present to you "10 Most Promising Healthcare Solution Providers." We could not have found a better time to announce 10 companies which are creating a buzz in the CIO circles and also moving ahead in the market. They are not only great in technology, but also dynamic to bring in business value and most importantly they have mastered the basic rule "Customer is the Key".
If we go back to our basics and still continue to follow the Golden Rule – "Customer is the Key," we can conquer the global markets. There is scope for growth and it's just that each one has to innovate on the Golden Rule according to frequently changing market dynamics. So, all you entrepreneurs out there "go find your niche and capture it with élan".

On The Deck

CXO Insights

Augmented And Virtual Reality In An Enterprise...

By Feroz Khan, Associate Director - Head Digital Technology Excellence, The Boston Consulting Group

Redefining the Concept of Enterprise Resource...

By Milind Kamat & Satbir Singh Kohli, CEO , EVP & Global head of SAP Delivery Centers and SAP Business head, Atos India

From Regulatory Mandate to Enterprise...

By Jayant Dwarkanath , CEO of Intense Technologies

Facebook