Ushering in New Beginnings Making Ends Meet

By Umair Naeem

And yet another financial year comes to a close, with businesses everywhere wondering how to implement all the talk and discussion about the mean, lean times. Customers, both large and small, will only spend money where they feel they are getting the maximum return on their investment, no matter how small. Vendors have probably reached a situation where they can no longer cut costs, because they’ve done what they could, and now need to be more creative in their selling approach.

Establishing relationships that go beyond the initial sale and don’t burden the customer in one installment is what the trend is moving towards – and quite quickly at that. Vendors are having more success by collecting a monthly fee rather than have one single payment upfront. Vendors are also creating more value for what they are charging for, and that’s where an increased collaborative effort comes in. This isn’t a very easy trend shift for Pakistani companies to make but in order to be more competitive, companies are looking to partner with those who complement their value proposition. Well, that’s how companies can serve the market not just more effectively, but grow it further.

In this issue of CIO Pakistan, we’ve got Nasir Khan, the CIO of PRAL (Pakistan Revenue Automation Pvt. Limited) talking about how his vision and effort has driven the company to better serve Pakistan in the lean times. We also have the Cover Story as a collaborative voice on what support the industry expects from the federal budget. Whether it’s the Telcos or the Internet Service Providers, small companies or large, everyone is holding their breath to get some relief, incentive or support from the announcement. And CIO Pakistan is proud to be partnering with OPEN Silicon Valley for the OPEN Forum’09 which is taking place on the 13th of June. You’ll find Dilawar Syed, President OPEN SV, talking about the event and well, we’ll be bringing you as many regular updates as possible on the CIO Pakistan website and WebStudio.

We’ve got two surveys in this issue – one about HR trends in IT companies and another about profiling the internet user in Pakistan. Both have been repeated requests we’ve been getting from readers and thought we’d run both in this issue since the results were quite interesting. With reference to the scrutiny that the industry is under, CIO Pakistan has already engaged with the World Economic Forum on the Readiness Report it publishes annually to help determine that the facts they have access to, accurately represent the reality on the ground.

Despite the tough times, we’ve got something great going on here, so keep the feedback coming let’s keep it alive!
Signing out,