IBM's business direction in Thailand this year will focus on three main areas and the company is expecting its revenue to grow at a rate about double that of the country's gross domestic product.
Country general manager Thanwa Laohasiriwong said that in 2010 IBM Thailand would concentrate on helping clients to make smarter decisions, supporting the Creative Thailand initiative and maintaining its position as an employer of choice.
To help clients make smarter decisions, the company will promote its Business Analytics and Managed Business Process Services. IBM currently provides these services in four areas: supply change management, human resource management, financial and administration and customer relationship management. It will focus on four industrial areas: telephone services, banking, healthcare and food industries and will help businesses to improve their insight into their organisations and to make better decisions on promotion, targeting customers and marketing.
To support the Creative Thailand initiative, IBM claims to offer both the technology and the environment for creativity. It supports the government's Creative Thailand policy, which aims to develop the economy by using intellectual property developed through a combination of culture, knowledge base and creativity.
Finally, it will continue to be an employer of choice by supporting Thailand's education development programmes to help create a 21st-century workforce.
"IBM expects to achieve revenue growth up to double GDP growth this year because the economy in Asia and Thailand has turned around, and the major driver is stronger economic recovery under the Stronger Thailand 2012 (Thai Khemkhaeng)," Thanwa said.
Among the factors driving business growth is the fact that 80 per cent of new data growth involves material of structured content, generated largely by e-mail, with increased contributions from documents, images and video, as well as audio, he said.
Moreover, with implementation of the Asean Free Trade Agreement, Thailand's trade with Asean territories is expected to grow by 25 per cent per year.
"We are trying to envisage the needs of our customers, such as organisations needing to adopt new ways of improving the speed with which they gather insights and make impacts," Thanwa said. "We will compare traditional business approaches with new ways, in order to create a balance and optimise their business. We will provide a unique, full-spectrum offering to customers, including consulting, transformation, implementation, process management and process outsourcing" he said.
Moreover, IBM will help its customers to improve efficiency and productivity, thereby reducing cost and waste.
Thanwa said about 50 per cent of IBM's revenue in Thailand in 2010 would come from business services. Government customers would be a key factor in driving economic growth because the government was injecting money into them and using information technology to develop their human resources.
