This ITAC Marketing and Sales Executive Think Tank was hosted at EDS Canada, an HP company and hosted Ms. Shari Rothman, Strategy & Planning, Americas Marketing, EDS Canada.

1. Detecting emerging trends and patterns in high tech
2. Deciding how to differentiate and deliver your offering

What we learned

• using word of mouth through customers
• articulating business value / benefits to customers (not features and functions)
• using industry analysts and other respected stakeholders
• understanding and responding to your customer’s risk comfort, trust, immediacy
• leveraging social networking sites, exploiting the “tribe” (validation by peers)
• simplifying messages

Certain conditions nurture innovation and usher in new technologies. Historically, these factors have been:

• economic changes that encourage cheaper ways of processing information
• a drive for greater operational efficiency
• increasing familiarity/comfort with new technology, critical mass of early adopters customer demand
• the recognition of unmet or unserviced needs
• demonstrated business value
• a focus on revenue generation
• the presence of entrepreneurs – those who will assume risk and maybe fail
• the presence of high-profile champions (e.g. Jobs, Gates)
• watershed moments that crystallize issues (e.g. Sept. 11 and security)

Market research can be helpful in identifying trends but it needs to be consistently done, narrowly focused and targeted to the right market. Market research can be especially useful when approaching new vertical markets or introducing new initiatives.

Smaller focus groups can elicit better qualitative information around trends than larger surveys.  

One-on-one sales meetings can be very effective in uncovering trends and issues; the field is often on the front line of trend movement, and can be the most immediate and credible source of such information.

The following technology area/issues are predicted to be the “hottest” emerging trends:

• security and privacy
• cloud-based models: shared services, Web access to applications
• mobility and mobile devices: access to information and services anytime, anywhere, anyhow
• complying with international financial standards and implications for financial systems
• youth market
• technologies that manage data explosion (e.g. business intelligence)
• miniaturization
• micro segmentation of markets
• virtual conferencing

Attendees: 

• Ron Mitchell, SVP, Corporate Marketing, Fujitsu Consulting Canada
• Jennifer Bentley, Vice President, Marketing, Longview Solutions
• Steve Currie, Director, Corporate Marketing, Open Text Corporation
• Wayne Wood, Technology Sales Manager, Oracle Corporation Canada Inc.
• Glenn Wolff, Director, Financial Services, Sun Microsystems of Canada Inc.
• Ann Christie, Independent
• Barbara LaPenta, Independent
• Chub Letenyei, Independent