Driven by the high fuel prices and increasing euro value, manufacturers in Europe have begun to enter strategic partnerships and collaborations with suppliers overseas to improve responsiveness across their supply chain. Further, deregulation and new stringent norms in the EU are driving manufactures towards collaborating and partnering, taking advantage of free trade flows in low-cost countries such as Romania and Netherlands, increasing capacities at reduced costs and entering new markets. In addition, pharmaceutical manufacturers have begun to look at collaboration and partnerships as a part of expanding their R&D activities.

The report forecasts the IT spending of the Manufacturing Industry in Europe over the period 2007-2010. It is meant for IT vendors and intends to help them identify selling opportunities in the Manufacturing Industry in Europe. The report identifies key business issues being faced by the Manufacturing Industry in Europe.

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 leading IT buyers and provides their brief company profile, along with their IT spending.

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 Arcelor Mittal, Nestle SA and Siemens AG.

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 Arcelor Mittal, Nestle SA and Siemens AG. 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 Arcelor Mittal, Nestle SA and Siemens AG will buy these products and services. Level II opportunity areas have lower scores and hence, lower probability to sell to Arcelor Mittal, Nestle SA and Siemens AG. Level III opportunities have the lowest scores and hence, unlikely to sell to Arcelor Mittal, Nestle SA and Siemens AG.

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.