Samtel Tele marketing Intern report page 10

5.3 Customer Business Analysis

SME sector is a focal point in the overall development of Bangladesh. In developing the SME sector, the fundamental problem lies with limited access to credit facilities and high financing cost. Generally SMEs are labor intensive with relatively low capital intensity. The SME also posses a character of privilege as cost effective and comparative cost advantages in nature. The private sector banks are generally reluctant to extend credit to the SME sector. So the need of SME is effective products with low costs. This cost can be lowered by reducing marketing cost of a product.

On the other hand there are a good number of sectors operating within SMEs. Some of these sectors are called “Booster Sectors”. The Booster Sectors in SME are:

I. Electronics and Electrical

II. Software Development

III. Light Engineering

IV. Agro-processing and related business

V. Leather and Leather goods

VI. Knitwear and Ready Made Garments

VII. Plastics and other synthetics

VIII. Healthcare and Diagnostics

IX. Educational Services

X. Pharmaceuticals/ Cosmetics/ Toiletries

XI. Fashion-rich personal effects, wear and consumption goods.

5.3.1 Target Sectors

All the booster sectors are enjoying many facilities from government. But when we analyzed the need of our product within SMEs, we found the following sectors to be most feasible based on the products of SGTL:

i. Educational Services: Bangladesh is clearly surplus in human beings.  To convert human beings into human resources must surely be a service industry worth hundreds of billion of Taka worth of potential market size.  And quality education that keeps successfully following the money trail meets the bill of both rising demand, and structural change.

ii. Healthcare: Currently healthcare is a growing concern in Bangladesh. Growing size of domestic market for specialized healthcare has started to create opportunities for legitimate import substitution.

iii. Transportation: Bangladesh has developed its road transport network abruptly within past few years. This is one of the stable sectors in our country. There are international road network available along with premium facilities.

iv. Residential Hotel: Residential hotel is chosen because it has a great need for the products of SGTL. This is an old sector and has many opportunities to improve its quality of service.

5.3.2 Motivation Behind Purchase

As the SMEs are growing they are in need of automation and database maintenance. The motivation behind the purchase from customers point is mainly getting a solution for accelerated and improved business process. They require maximum fulfillment of end-user needs and hassle-free operations. SMEs have limited access to credit facilities and high financing cost. If there is a solution to reduce their cost in manpower maintenance by introducing some automation definitely they will take the opportunity. Moreover efficiency and accuracy in operation would act as another motivating factor.

5.3.3 Decision Maker

Usually SMEs are run by one key decision maker, in most cases the owner of the organization. In some sectors like Education and Health service there is individual procurement team but most of the sectors are run by only one key person. Purchase of new products mainly depends on maintaining good relation with the key decision maker for these organizations. But the scenario is changing. Reputation of a supplier, ease in distribution, after sales service and regular update of product are acting as motivating factors to the decision makers.

From depth interview it was found that most of the universities have different IT section. They check the feasibility of a new product before procurement. Heath service providers are trailing the universities; they are coming up by appointing IT persons for offering better service and customer database maintenance. But in transportation and residential hotel sectors, the organization those fall in SMEs are quite ignorant and have less curiosity to develop different sections for IT. Their buying decisions are still taken by the owner of the organization.

5.3.4 Customer Information Source

The main sources of information about a product for the business customers are as follows:

• Competing Establishments
• Sales representatives from suppliers
• Friends/ Relatives
• By media (Magazine, TVC)

From above list it is quite clear that Telemarketing is entirely a new source of information for the SMEs.

5.4 Competitors

The ICT sector of Bangladesh is one of the fastest growing sectors of its economy. The Government of Bangladesh has declared this sector as “the trust sector”. But this sector is quite fragmented. From a survey of BASIS (Bangladesh Association of Software & Information Services) it is seen only 216 out of nearly 450 companies are members of BASIS. Detail company data cannot be easily obtained, as detail company profiles are not available. From “Bangladesh Software & ITES Directory 2005” published by BASIS and by using some other sources like internet and IT professionals, a list of software developers is made.  Within the list I have marked the top ten software development farms to be potential competitor of SGTL when the market is limited within SMEs.

Table: Competitors Offerings and Clients

Sl.	Company Name	Offerings	Clients
1	MGH Infotech Ltd. www.mghgroup.com/infotech.htm	Cargo tracking system, vehicle tracking system with underlying mobile technology	MGH group, Mearsk lines, Hanif Paribahan, SA Paribahan
2	Information Service Network Ltd. http://www.bangla.net/	Inventory Management, Support Management, Billing	North South University, Crescent Hospital
3	IBCS Primax www.ibcs-primax.com	HRM solution, Employee database, Ticketing Software	Silk Lines, Bangladesh Raiway
4	BDCOM www.bdcom.com	HRM solution, Salary calculation, Front Office Management	First Security Bank, Shohag Paribahan, Prothom Alo, INS.
5	BRAC BDmail Networks Ltd. http://www.bdmail.net	Accounting System, Hospital Management, Student Admission and Registration, Payroll System, Hotel Billing System	Hotel Millenium, Hotel Agrabad, Lubana General Hospital
6	TechnoHaven Co. Ltd. www.technohaven.com	Reservation and Ticketing System , Enterprise Resource Management	Eastern Bank, Bangladesh Navy, University of Dhaka
7	Aftab IT http://software.aitlbd.net	Accounting Management System	Navana Builders, Navana Motors
8	Daffodil Online Ltd. www.daffodilnet.com	Access Control Software, Billing Software	Aarong, A no. of Garments etc.
9	Sigma Technologies Ltd. www.sigmatech.com.bd	Access control Software, Inventory Management	Chittagong hotel
10	Inforev Limited http://www.inforev.net	SMS Banking, SMS Sales Force Automation, SMS Business Promotion, Centralized Reporting System, Content Provider, CellEmail	GrameenPhone, Citycell and many other organizations