Companies propose partnerships for survival

Local software companies are seeking to turn the current economic crisis into an opportunity, and have called on others in the industry to form partnerships and alliances in order to survive.

These were main messages arising from a recent forum entitled How to Survive the Economic Crisis, organised by the Software Industry Promotion Agency (Sipa), the National Electronics and Computer Technology Centre (Nectec), Software Park Thailand and other partners.

The chief executive of Wealth Management Systems, Somkiat Chinthammit, told the forum that his company had studied many economic downturns and had found that the country spent an average of three years recovering from each event, and in the process, Thailand lost 11 per cent of its gross domestic product.

Therefore, businesses should be aware of cash flow in the short term; software houses should prepare sufficient cash to maintain their business and working capacity for at least six months.

Moreover, companies should create products, solutions and services with identity and image and position their business according to standards.

"I believed that software houses should run their business according to three pillars: people, processes and professional best, in order to create knowledge management, good culture and knowledge sharing within an organisation," Somkiat said.

MFEC president Siriwat Vongjarukorn said that amid the economic crisis, his company planned to run its business in three directions. The first is understanding customers and the industry in order to support customers behaviour and provide services according to demand.

The second is adapting the company's business to create partnerships and alliances to propose products and services to support customers.

"In this situation, we do not need to fight with our competitors. Instead, we are looking for partners and alliances, which expertise and strength in areas that our business does not cover, so that we can propose products and solutions to customers. This will create a win-win situation," Siriwat said.

Finally, MFEC is focusing on what it calls "the right call competence or technology practice". In choosing technology vendors, it will look for those who have developed practices in particular technologies. As a result, the technology practices will help to drive business and industry growth.

Association of Thai ICT Industry president Jumrud Sawangsamud, who is also chief executive of International Research Company, said the global financial crisis and Thailand's political situation had affected the country's ICT market as a whole, because government, business and household buyers were delaying decisions to purchase ICT products to support their businesses and organisations.

However, he believed that new technologies and trends, including 3G, worldwide interoperability for microwave access (WiMax), software as a service (SaaS), service-oriented architecture (SOA), Green IT and virtualisation technology would encourage and boost the industry this year.