The market is constantly changing and it has become critical for product IT companies to keep their finger on its pulse. Market analysis allows you to create successful products and look for promising niches for business development.
In Russia, hundreds of new IT products enter the market every year. The departure of foreign companies creates a vacuum that Russian developers are trying to fill. In addition, the emergence of new products is influenced by the development of technology. Thus, the possibilities of applying generative neural networks in various processes and fields have provoked the appearance of new services and functions in already working IT solutions.
In the Russian IT market today, as in the fairy tale about Alice, you have to run with all your legs to stay in place, and to somewhere to hit, you need to run at least twice as fast. However, it is important to understand where to run and why.
New niches are not only opportunities, but also risks. It is dangerous to go blindly into the market without a clear idea of demand and competition. And the analyst is the person who is looking for answers to the questions, which new niches are the most promising and which products will be in demand tomorrow.
A clear example: when entering the marketplace, 50% of success is choosing a niche. Sellers, as a rule, start selling a product without knowing for sure whether it will be in demand. If you guessed – business will take off, if you miscalculated – losses are inevitable. That is why there is a large outflow of celery on such sites.
When it comes to expensive IT products, in the development of which large teams and funds are involved, relying on intuition and luck is too risky. That’s why a market analyst comes into play. It collects and structures a variety of information, on the basis of which an informed decision can be made.
Analytics is a creative process
There is no single objective source of information in any market. Even studies of industry associations are difficult to call exhaustive. For example, an IT association surveys its members for development some technologies. It is important to understand that perhaps 90 percent of the major market players are in this organization. It is their opinion that will be reflected in the study. But this approach often overlooks the opinions of small but fast-growing companies. Therefore, one cannot limit oneself to the objective conclusions of such studies and surveys at first glance.
Analytics is always a creative process where there is no standard algorithm. What exactly needs to be analyzed depends on the specific task. It is from defining the criteria for analysis that the work begins. As a rule, the analyst examines:
- Industry and its prospects – trends in a specific market segment, as well as potential opportunities for growth.
- The target audience is the needs and behavior of potential consumers.
- Competitors – their products, market share, strengths and weaknesses.
Collection of information
Selection of data sources is a key stage of analysis. They can be divided into two types – open source and field research.
Open source is anything you can find on the internet:
- Market research from research agencies and industry associations. For example, Gartner reports, Russoft surveys, Gromov reviews, etc. are often useful when studying the IT market.
- Information and analytics from specialized media. CNews, Tadviser, Telecom Daily and other publications publish news, expert comments and analytical articles that help to get an idea of the current market situation.
- Official statistics. Data from Rasstat, the Federal Tax Service, the Ministry of Statistics and other government structures provide official information on the state of various market segments.
- Ratings and rankings. Rating agencies help evaluate the position of companies and products on the market, identify leaders and outsiders. Moreover, many large companies specifically collect data for such reviews throughout the year to demonstrate their growth in certain segments.
- Companies’ own reports. Studying the reports of the market players allows you to get information about the products, strategies, financial results and their plans.
Field research is a time-consuming process that allows you to dive deeper into the subject of study.
- Communication with experts and audiences. Allows you to get the opinion of specialists from different companies or find out the preferences of consumers.
- Study of specific products. Helps evaluate quality, functionality, and user experience, as well as examine market success and failure cases.
The next stage is to systematize the collected information to extract valuable insights from the chaos. Moreover, large volumes of data require the analyst to use a variety of tools, from classic (such as Excel) to specific (such as SQL and Python).
Today, artificial intelligence has been added to these tools. It can be considered as an additional device. First, it is automation and assistance for solving routine tasks. The second is the search for alternative sources of information. Working with generative AI like ChatGPT is especially useful because it helps you look at information from a different angle.
A well-crafted query allows for an expanded response that can provide additional insights for analysis. So far, artificial intelligence is perceived controversially and causes a desire to understand why such a decision was made. But it would be a big mistake to use as a source for decision-making, the neural network throws up ideas or triggers that need further study.
Examples of market analyst tasks
Specific sources and tools for processing information, as well as emphasis on its systematization, depend on the specifics of the market and set tasks. For example, analysts need to assess the prospects of new products in the low-code area (an approach to software development with minimal use of manual code). In this case, he should study the existing platforms, identify their common features, differences, strengths and weaknesses, as well as areas of application. Moreover, it is necessary to focus on bottlenecks where these solutions do not work. This will help to see the unfilled niches, and then choose the right strategy for product positioning.
Sometimes, due to the complexity of the task, the analyst needs to spend more time diving into the topic. For example, the analysis of bank processing centers requires immersion in the specifics of the financial industry. It is necessary to study in detail not only the internal structures of credit organizations, the features of their information systems, but also the legislation of Russia and the CIS. A comprehensive analysis can take considerable time.
When an analyst considers the idea of developing a unique AI agent, he needs to focus on studying what other market players are currently doing in this direction. Publications in the media, speeches of experts at conferences and other open sources will help in this.
A market analyst can not only study new niches, but also help develop existing products. In this case, analytics becomes a continuous process. Time intervals (eg quarterly) and key metrics to track can be set to regularly update data and adjust findings.
Work plan
Thus, an example plan for an IT market analysis project will look like this:
- Depending on the goal (for example, creating a successful product or finding promising niches for business development), determine which criteria should be researched;
- Select suitable data sources;
- Collect detailed and truthful information;
- Systematize and study data;
- Based on the obtained results, propose an optimal solution or strategy for introducing new products to the market.
Given that analytics is always a living process, this plan can be tailored to specific goals and objectives.