Monday, April 17, 2006

Selling Proprietary Software in Asia

Proprietary Software business over the years has matured markets such as North America and Western Europe. A number of IP driven products and solutions have helped create enterprises (big as well as small). These businesses and products have been able to provide tremendous value to their customers; and in return have created a fortune for themselves.

In their bid to expand the market for their products, many businesses are looking at Asia. Either adapting their existing products to this market or even developing new products focused on the Asian market.
These companies face following obstacles:
  1. Asia is not one large market; it is a sum total of many markets that are fundamentally different from one another.
  2. Software IP and thus the concept of price that is linked to the value delivered is a difficult concept to sell in this part of the world. The markets are still tuned to think of software price as 'Development Cost +'
  3. The need as well as the demand is for top of the line technology at less than affordable price

Marketers often struggle to come to terms with the above phenomenon; and most of them give up their efforts on the Asian market.

Does this market hold promise for Western proprietary software companies? Or is this a readymade opportunity for local companies?

The local companies probably face dilemma of a different type:

  1. They have so far gained expertise in running successful development operations for western multinational... Mostly software companies.
  2. Their processes are tuned to deliver value to software companies; they have a long way to go before they are able to construct and manage the entire value chain needed to service an end customer who is not a software company.
  3. They also lack the marketing muscle needed to become successful in software products market

This probably provides an ideal opportunity for collaborative efforts.

posted by Unknown @ 4:47 PM

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