UK Public Sector Market Entry Strategy

The UK Government market is potentially lucrative and is rapidly growing market for ICT, with this being valued at £12.1 billion for 2003/04. However, it differs from the private sector in terms of structure, focus, funding and attitude. These factors alone can make it a difficult and daunting market to address, however it is an area where Ignetica have built considerable expertise.

Our client in this case is a €1bn German Technology Company, with broad European market coverage, including a sizeable UK business.  Their challenge for Ignetica was to plan and develop a market entry plan for the UK public sector market, and in particular to capitalise on a major ICT development initiative.

After gaining a clear understanding of our client’s capability, the first phase was evaluating the business opportunities that exist in the government market. Two significant opportunities as well as a number of other smaller programs were identified as potential targets for our client’s activity. This represented a major shift in our clients

The first opportunity was part of a much larger £2.3bn government procurement that was already underway. Our client’s technology and ability to deliver were well proven for similar requirements in almost identical markets around the world. The challenge was to pull together the information, expertise and required resource to move quickly on this opportunity. Our client also had little experience of the UK government market and as a result no relationships or profile within this market.

The solution was two-fold, firstly to accelerate their acceptance by the end user, the UK government; this was achieved using Ignetica’s knowledge of the UK government market and calling on its extensive network of contacts within the appropriate departments. Secondly, it was key for our client to “Leap frog” the competition. This was achieved by the appropriate partnering with the right system integrators. This was only possible because of our client’s excellent reputation and pedigree in similar markets in other countries. Ignetica were able to call on our extensive network within the system integrators and co-ordinate our clients global offices to establish reference projects where our client and the system integrators had successfully worked together on other similar contracts.

Our client has now engaged Ignetica on a long-term basis to support them through the next phase of their government market strategy. Ignetica has helped this client gain clear focus, with an actionable plan to enter this market.  Based on the business plan we helped the UK business gain the necessary funding from its parent company, and already this is paying off with our client already engaged in major government procurement exercise.