Professional Services Firms with the Highest Brand Recognition Don't Always Meet Buyers' Needs

March 25, 2013 - PRLog -- New research from ITSMA’s Professional Services and Solutions 2012 Brand Tracking Study shows that buyers of consulting and technology professional services want to work with companies who know them best, deliver on time and on budget, are reliable and responsive, and can innovate despite constraints.

Services providers are performing well in the areas that are most important to buyers, such as delivering on time and on budget, being a consistent and reliable provider of services, or being accessible and responsive. Yet none of the providers in the study have distinguished themselves as being able to save clients money while also adding value.  

The Best Name is Not Always the Best Performer

Buyers are more familiar with IBM—which tops the list in both aided and unaided awareness—than any other provider of IT professional services examined in the study. However, Deloitte is the firm that is named most often as the provider that performs best in the brand attributes that are most important to buyers. Among the Indian heritage companies, Cognizant tops the list.

ITSMA determines brand leadership by assigning each company a Brand Equity Index (BEI) score, which is calculated by weighting and summing individual firms’ ratings for unaided awareness, aided awareness, first firm to call (or “top of mind”), familiarity, and favorability.

With a BEI score of 59.8, IBM is the clear leader in brand equity for the examined IT professional services firms. Other top achievers include HP, Accenture, Deloitte, and Dell, which debuts as a “strong” brand. The next tier of BEI ranked companies includes Capgemini, Ernst & Young, KPMG, and PwC.
Of the six Indian heritage firms included in the study—Cognizant, HCL, iGATE, Infosys, TCS, and Wipro—brand equity is highest for Cognizant, Infosys, and TCS.

Methodology

ITSMA interviewed 460 senior IT and business decision makers based in the US, UK, France, Germany, and Brazil. Study respondents all held director, vice president, or C-level positions and represented organizations with revenue or operating budgets ranging from $100 million to over $20 billion, with more than half of respondents representing enterprises with $1 billion or greater in annual revenue, in eight major industries.

Respondents qualified for inclusion based on their involvement in purchasing IT professional services, defined as “technology and/or related business services (such as consulting, systems integration or implementation, or outsourcing) applied to address customer business objectives and valued at $100,000 or more.”

The report examined 16 professional services and solutions firms, including Accenture, Capgemini, Cognizant Technology Solutions, Computer Sciences Corporation, Dell, Deloitte, Ernst & Young, HCL, Hewlett-Packard, IBM Global Services, iGATE, Infosys, KPMG, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Tata Consultancy Services, and Wipro.