The market is constantly changing, and it has become critical for IT product companies to keep their finger on the 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 striving to fill. In addition, the emergence of new products is influenced by the development of technologies. Thus, the possibilities of using generative neural networks in various processes and industries provoked the emergence of new services and functions in already operating IT solutions.
In the Russian IT market today, as in a fairy tale about Alice, you need to run with all your feet in order to stay where you are, and in order to get somewhere, 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 enter the market blindly without a clear idea of demand and competition. An analyst is the person who is looking for answers to questions about which new niches are most promising and what products will be in demand tomorrow.
A clear example: when entering the marketplace, 50% of success is a niche choice. Sellers, as a rule, start selling goods, not knowing exactly whether they will be in demand. If you guess – your business will take off, if you miscalculate – losses are inevitable. That is why there is a large outflow of sellers at such sites.
When it comes to expensive IT products that involve large teams and tools, relying on intuition and luck is too risky. Therefore, a market analyst comes into play. He collects and structures a variety of information helping to make an informed decision.
Analytics is a creative process
There is no single objective source of information in any market. Even the research of industry associations can hardly be called exhaustive. For example, an IT association conducts a survey of its members for the development of some technologies. It is important to understand that perhaps 90% of large market participants are in this organization. It is their opinion that will be reflected in the study. But this approach often overlooks the views of small but fast-growing companies. Therefore, one cannot limit oneself to the seemingly objective conclusions of such studies and surveys.
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 with the definition of criteria for analysis that the work begins. Typically, an analyst will investigate:
- Industry and its prospects – trends in a specific market segment, as well as potential growth opportunities.
- Target audience – the needs and behavior of potential consumers.
- Competitors – their products, market share, strengths and weaknesses.
Information-gathering
Selecting data sources is a key step in the analysis. They can be divided into two types – open sources and field research.
Open sources are all that can be found on the Internet:
- Market research from analyst agencies and industry associations. For example, when studying the IT market, Gartner reports, Russoft surveys, Gromov reviews, etc. are often useful.
- Information and analytics from specialized media. CNews, Tadviser, Telecom Daily and other media publish news, expert comments and analytical articles that help to get an idea of the current market situation.
- Official statistics. Data from Rosstat, the Federal Tax Service, the Ministry of Digital Science and other government agencies provide official information on the state of various market segments.
- Ratings and raking. Rating agencies help assess the position of companies and products in 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 market players allows you to get information about products, strategies, financial results and their plans.
Field research is a labor-intensive process that allows you to dive deeper into the subject of study.
- Communicating with experts and audiences. Allows you to get the opinion of specialists from various companies or find out consumer preferences.
- Studying specific products. Helps assess quality, functionality and user experience, as well as explore successful and unsuccessful cases on the market.
The next stage is the systematization of the collected information in order to extract valuable insights from the chaos. Moreover, large amounts of data require the analyst to use a variety of tools from classic (like Excel) to specific ones (like SQL and Python).
Today, AI has been added to these tools. It can be seen as an additional tool. First, it is automation and help to solve routine tasks. Secondly, it is the search for alternative sources of information. Working with generative AI like ChatGPT is especially useful because it helps to look at information from a different angle.
A properly constructed query provides a detailed answer where you can find additional ideas for analysis. While AI is perceived contradictory and causes a desire to figure out why such a decision was made. But it will be a big mistake to use it as a source for making decisions, the neural network offers up ideas or triggers that require further study.
Market Analyst Task Examples
Specific sources and tools for processing information, as well as emphasis in its systematization, depend on the specifics of the market and the tasks set. For example, an analyst needs to assess the prospects of new products in the field of low-code (an approach to software development with minimal use of manual code). In this case, he should study existing platforms, identify their common features, differences, strengths and weaknesses, as well as areas of application. Moreover, the emphasis must be placed on bottlenecks where these solutions do not work. This will help you see unfilled niches so that you can then choose the right product positioning strategy.
Sometimes, due to the complexity of the task, the analyst needs to spend more time immersing himself in 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 institutions, and the features of their information systems, but also the legislation of Russia and the CIS. Complex analysis can take considerable time.
If an analyst is considering the idea of developing a unique AI agent, he needs to focus on studying what other market players are currently doing in this direction. Media publications, expert speeches at conferences and other open sources will help with this.
A market analyst can study not only new niches, but also help in the development of existing products. In this case, analytics becomes a continuous process. You can set time intervals (for example, quarterly) and key metrics to track to update data regularly and correct conclusions.
Work plan
Thus, an approximate project plan for IT market analytics will look like this:
- Depending on the goal (for example, creating a successful product or finding promising niches for business development), determine which criteria need to be investigated;
- Select suitable data sources;
- Collect detailed and reliable information;
- Systematize and study the data;
- Based on the results obtained, propose an optimal solution or strategy for bringing new products to market.
Given that analytics is always a living process, this plan can be adapted to specific goals and objectives.
By Elena Sarmanova, market research analyst at iFellow