Bank of China - IT Sales Opportunities

03 November 2008, Pages – 31

Bank of China (BOC) is a commercial bank established in 1912. Its business portfolio mainly comprises of commercial banking, investment banking and insurance. In major, the bank is engaged in commercial banking business, including corporate banking services, personal banking services and financial market business. The corporate banking services include traditional credit, financing, international settlement, investment banking and money management services. The personal banking services consist of deposit, personal financing, financial tools, personal investment, Great Wall card and personal foreign exchange services.

Bank of China has played an important role in China’s financial history and has served as the central bank, international exchange bank and specialized foreign trade bank successively. Bank of China became the state designated specialized foreign exchange bank in 1949 and has given substantial contributions to the development of foreign trade and the national economy. During the beginning of the reform of financial sector in 1994, Bank of China was converted into a wholly state-owned commercial bank.

Industry trends and drivers have a direct or indirect affect on IT spending of all companies operating within an industry. For example – increased threat perception and incidence of fraud would result in increase in demand for security software and hardware. Thus, we can conclude that industry spending on any particular IT product or service is an important indicator of the criticality of that product or service for the industry. Based on the IT spend information available in ‘TechNavio^TM’, we have computed a ‘criticality score’ for various IT products and services, for Bank of China.

Various company level developments and events are important indicators of selling opportunities and drive the sales of IT products and services. For example – an acquisition by Bank of China might result in opportunities for IT migration and integration services. By tracking these sales drivers (using ‘TechNavio^TM’), we have arrived at a demand score for each product and service.

Through an in-depth analysis of industry trends and drivers and company level developments and events, we have made the ‘IT Selling Opportunities Map’ for hardware, software and IT services for Bank of China. These maps have been divided into four zones representing Level I, Level II and Level III opportunity areas. Level I opportunity areas have the highest scores and hence, there is a high probability that Bank of China will buy these products and services. Level II opportunity areas have lower scores and hence, lower probability to sell to Bank of China. Level III opportunities have the lowest scores and hence, unlikely to sell to Bank of China.

The report is meant for IT vendors and intends to help them identify selling opportunities within the company. Further, the identified sales drivers can be used to penetrate these accounts or increase current share of the customer's wallet. Also, the report lists key IT spending decision makers, which will enable salesperson to directly contact the key executives within the company.