Accenture High Tech Solutions for Serving the Small and Medium ...

Accenture High Tech Solutions
for Serving the Small and Medium
Business (SMB) Segment

The small- and medium-sized business
(SMB) market is expected to drive significant
revenue growth for companies in the
electronics and high-tech sectors in the
coming years. Some estimates place the
revenue potential as high as 50 percent
of annual sales.

Is your business ready to capitalize on
this emerging—and increasingly important—
customer segment?
To achieve high performance and
capture the growth opportunity locked
within this lucrative market, you
need to:
• Develop a clear strategy for
penetrating the SMB space. This
involves understanding the needs
of this highly fragmented market
and targeting your offerings to
take maximum advantage of highvolume
sales opportunities.
• Establish and streamline organizational
structures and collaborative
relationships that not only engage
your SMB customers, but also allow
you to reduce your sales costs, build
skills quickly and penetrate the SMB
market before your competitors.
• Optimize a unique, end-to-end SMB
execution capability that achieves
economic and operational gains
across marketing, consulting, system
integration and sales.
With the Accenture SMB Routes-to-
Market Offering, we can help you
reach the right customers in the right
way at the right cost. The offering
syndicates industry-wide best practices
to help clients align critical needs
and achieve SMB imperatives.

Opportunity is knocking
Electronics, high-tech and communications
companies understand that
continued revenue growth cannot
be derived from enterprise customers
alone. Market saturation, maturing
customer bases and the risk of
commoditization are making it much
more difficult to find—much less
win—significant sales opportunities
among large customers. In addition,
the cost of acquiring and serving
global accounts is quite high (and
rising). Profits made from enterprise
sales have been eroding for quite
some time, and will almost certainly
continue their downward slide.
The SMB market, in contrast, looks
increasingly attractive. While specific
definitions can differ by geographic
region, industry or offering potential,
the SMB market is commonly described
as including companies with five to
1000 employees. Currently 77-million
strong, the number of SMBs is growing
by approximately two million each
year. In 2003, this group’s spending
on information technology (IT) and
telecommunications hardware,
software and service topped $800
billion. More good news: year-overyear
spending growth among SMBs
continues to outpace that of larger
businesses. By 2009, the purchase
tally is expected to exceed $1 trillion
(See Figure 1).
Yet, with this new market opportunity
comes significant challenges:
Expensive Segment to Access
Because the SMB market is so highly
fragmented, conventional approaches
and channels used to reach enterprise
customers are much less effective. As
many companies are learning, simply
applying enterprise sales and delivery
models to the SMB market results in
sub-optimal customer interactions.
Large Market/Fragmented Growth
The fragmentation that exists within
the SMB market becomes particularly
apparent when assessing these
customers’ needs and product/service
requirements. Companies in the
electronics and high-tech arena must
understand these disparate needs
before they can design and deliver
tailored offerings that will best meet
the SMBs’ objectives.
Internal Obstacles & Barriers
Understandably, companies are
striving for first-mover advantage
in the lucrative SMB space. The result,
however, of this accelerated push to
market in this fragmented space is
internal complexity and confusion,
most often characterized by ineffective,
inconsistent, non-scalable
operating procedures and execution
capabilities.
To address these challenges and
take advantage of the potentially
significant opportunities that await,
companies need to consider evolving
best practices, standards and tools to
expand sales channels and embrace
SMB market penetration.

SMB Growth/Revenue
100%
80%
60%
40%
20%
0%
Number of SMB's
Worldwide 2003
100% =
77.5 million
Source: AMI-Partners, August 2004
Figure 1
SMB and
Telecom Spending
Worldwide 2003
100% =
810.03 Billion
2009 Spending
It seems that large-scale IT
vendors often get the packaging
right, but never deliver on the
actual service, support, or
appropriate sales structure to
identify and serve this sector.
100% =
1,148.70 Billion
Information Week, 11/30/04
Japan
Asia-Pacific
(excluding Japan)
Eastern Europe,
Middle East, Africa
Western Europe
Latin America
North America

“ To deliver to this market space, we
recognize one of our key capabilities
is market segmentation—knowing who
we are selling to, when and where.”
Bill LePage CISCO Systems
Vice President - Worldwide InsideSales
A new market opportunity
calls for a new approach
Accenture’s ongoing research into the
characteristics of high-performance
businesses reveals that top companies
are obsessed with winning the
battle for the customer. In the SMB
space, this means more than simply
repackaging your existing sales model,
stripping down your product portfolio
or opening a call center phone line
dedicated to small- and medium-sized
businesses. It means fundamentally
changing the way you go to market.
We often find the capabilities needed
to effectively implement and run your
SMB initiatives are markedly different
from those used to service your enterprise
customers. For example, SMB and
commercial companies have different
support, financing, and infrastructure
requirements. Expansion of your
strategy to suit customers’ unique
needs may also require an expansion
of these capabilities.
Based on our deep industry insights
and proven customer relationship
management capabilities, we have
developed an end-to-end solution
that is unique to others’ tactical or
siloed offerings. Our integrated
SMB approach typically includes
strategic guidance, process, and
system reengineering to operationalize
critical sales functions. And we have
bundled these capabilities to deliver
a comprehensive solution that helps
you achieve first-mover advantage
(See Figure 2).
Accenture’s SMB Routes-to-Market
Offering: A set of strategies, best
practice processes, tools and business
process outsourcing arrangements that
can help you:
• Operationalize your strategy
• Maximize customer segment
penetration and profitability
• Drive greater revenue and decrease
expenses
• Maximize the efficiency and
effectiveness of SMB interactions
• Improve the customer experience
and brand loyalty

Routes-to-Market Value Pyramid
SMB Strategy &
Offering Development
SMB Resource Alignment
SMB Execution
Figure 2
This solution, which we call the
Accenture SMB Routes-to-Market,
comprises three core components:
SMB Strategy & Offering
Development
Through robust customer analytics,
data integration solutions and leading
data warehousing and prospecting
services, we help you define and
segment your SMB customer base. We
work with you to generate customer
and partner insights that allow you to
define and target sales opportunities
for maximum advantage. In short, we
help you create an offering that meets
your customers’ requirements and
satisfies your financial goals.
SMB Resource Alignment
At Accenture, we know that a solid
SMB strategy will only get you so
far. Success lies in leveraging collaborative
alliances and partnerships
to engage the right talent and skills.
Our strengths in organizational
structure and design allow us to
SMB Sales
& Marketing
SMB Operations
Support
SMB Reporting
Data & Analytics
Engagement
Model
Generate
Demand
Enable Strategy
Enable Strategy
Sell
Offering
Segmentation
Service
Capabilities
align competencies and implement
high-performance SMB programs that
increase speed-to-market and lower
the cost of selling.
SMB Execution
At Accenture, we help you minimize
internal complexities by creating
superior, highly manageable SMB-
specific capabilities to embrace new
partners and build routes to market.
Our capabilities enable you operationalize
across the functional spectrum—
from marketing, channel and sales
operations to systems integration
to finance and accounting. We
package our comprehensive industry
know-how of channel partners with
proven solutions, including SMB-
tailored support services, applications,
training practices and tools, to help
you get your program off the ground
or to the next level of performance.
Understanding that your fastest-
growing customer segments are not
limited by geography, our execution
expertise also includes region-specific
Retain
High Value
Consulting
Systems
Integration
$ BPO
capabilities. And we offer a full range
of outsourcing services for various
sales and sales operations functions,
which allow us to help our clients
enter the SMB market quickly and in
the most cost-effective manner.

Partner with a proven leader
Accenture offers what no other
provider can: a revolutionary, endto-end
solution that helps companies
achieve high performance—and higher
revenues—by optimizing their entire
SMB go-to-market life cycle. Our
solution leverages a new consulting
model that revolutionizes the traditional
consultant-client relationship
and positions Accenture as a true
strategic partner for your SMB
initiatives (See Figure 3).
The Accenture SMB Routes-to-Market
solution is also grounded in our:
• Breadth and depth of skills in
designing and operationalizing
successful go-to-market strategies
• Leading customer relationship
management capabilities that help
our clients win the battle for the
customer (regardless of the
customer’s size)
• Proven consulting, systems
integration and business process
outsourcing expertise—and the
ability to blend these competencies
to create a one-of-a-kind offering
• World-class program implementation
and management capabilities
and highly skilled, global resources
prepared to help you achieve
long-term success
• Alliance relationships with many
of the world’s leading service
providers, as well as many of
the emerging players poised to
revolutionize service delivery
• Commitment to helping our
clients achieve high performance
at every turn
In our work with hundreds of clients
in the electronics and high-tech
industries, we have developed a keen
understanding of the risks and rewards
that await those companies preparing
to make their inevitable move into
the SMB space. Along the way, we
have packaged our most relevant
insights and capabilities to help
these companies turn their SMB
vision into a reality. The SMB Routesto-Market
offering is part of our
continued commitment to our clients
and their needs for faster time-tomarket,
more efficient use of resources,
lower sales acquisition costs, increased
margins, increased customer satisfaction
and higher revenues.
The Accenture SMB Routes-to-Market
offering is led by Kevin Bandy, who
is a member of the leadership team
for Accenture’s Sales Transformation
practice. He serves as global lead for
assisting communications and hightech
companies improve their sales
capacities to net top line revenue
growth through increased productivity
and efficient sales operations. Other
executive team members helping
companies establish a long-term
commitment to SMB organizations
with new kinds of talent and
specialized capabilities include Ron
Ref, Jeff Baumgarten and Naveen Jain.

Traditional consulting models
in the area of sales optimization
Focus on cost savings Focus on differentiated
business value
Focus on completing
activites
Are dedicated to
improving processes
Does not involve
risk-sharing
View consultants
as contractors
Identify, collect
and align data
Figure 3. Accenture’s SMB consulting model marks
an evolutionary step toward true consultant-sales
organization partnership
Accenture's collaborative
SMB consulting model
Focus on generating
outcomes
Is dedicated to
achieving results
Shares risk between
Accenture and the client
Identify, collect
and Positions align dataAccenture
and
the client as strategic partners

No one can help you build your SMB
capabilities more effectively than
Accenture. Let us help you build an
integrated, end-to-end SMB sales
capability that will position you for high
performance and competitive advantage.
For more information on how
Accenture’s Routes-to-Market
offering can help you reach small-
and medium-sized businesses more
quickly and more effectively, contact
Kevin.F.Bandy@accenture.com.

Copyright © 2006 Accenture
All rights reserved.
Accenture, its logo, and
High Performance Delivered
are trademarks of Accenture.
About Accenture
Accenture is a global management
consulting, technology services and
outsourcing company. Committed
to delivering innovation, Accenture
collaborates with its clients to help
them become high-performance
businesses and governments. With
deep industry and business process
expertise, broad global resources and
a proven track record, Accenture
can mobilize the right people, skills,
and technologies to help clients
improve their performance. With
approximately 140,000 people in
48 countries, the company generated
net revenues of US$16.65 billion for
the fiscal year ended Aug. 31, 2006.
Its home page is www.accenture.com.