Research and Markets has announced the addition of the “Ford Motor Company – IT Sales Opportunities – 2008” report to their offering.

Ford Motor Company (Ford), based in Dearborn-Michigan (US), manufactures and distributes automobiles in 200 countries across six continents. The company’s core and affiliated automotive brands include Ford, Lincoln, Mazda, Mercury, Jaguar, Land Rover and Volvo. Its automotive-related services include Ford Motor Credit Company.

Ford operates in two segments: Automotive and Financial Services. The Automotive segment includes the operations of The Americas, Ford Europe and Premier Automotive Group, Ford Asia Pacific and Africa/Mazda. The Financial Services segment includes the operations of Ford Motor Credit Company (Ford Credit), which is engaged in vehicle-related financing, leasing, and insurance.

Industry trends and drivers have a direct or indirect affect on IT spending of all companies operating within an industry. For example – increase in sourcing from low cost countries might influence Ford to relook at their supply chains, resulting in selling opportunities for SCM solutions, collaboration tools etc. 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’, we have computed a ‘criticality score’ for various IT products and services, for Ford.

Various company level developments and events are important indicators of selling opportunities and drive the sales of IT products and services. For example – an acquisition by Ford might result in opportunities for IT migration and integration services. By tracking these sales drivers (using ‘TechNavio’), we have arrived at a demand score for each product and service.

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 Ford. 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 Ford will buy these products and services. Level II opportunity areas have lower scores and hence, lower probability to sell to Ford. Level III opportunities have the lowest scores and hence, unlikely to sell to Ford.

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 customers wallet. Also, the report lists key IT spending decision makers, which will enables salesperson to directly contact the key executives within the company.

TechNavio Insights is a set of reports based on TechNavio – a market intelligence platform for the IT industry. It builds on the intelligence available within TechNavio, and leverages on the custom research experience of the Technology Navigators. TechNavio is built on years of experience of Infiniti Research in deep dive custom research and consulting for over 30 Fortune 500 companies and numerous large and mid-sized companies.