Software firms eye ten global products by 2016
Oct 23, 2011
The Philippine Software Industry Association (PSIA) has set a target of developing and commercializing ten globally recognized software products in various categories by 2016, with each software product targeted to generate at least $1 million annually from offshore costumers.
The industry group set the ambitious goals after forming a Product Development Special Interest Group (PD/SIG) to help address challenges currently faced by its members in monetizing existing software products and enhancing the skill sets of its employees.
Arup Maity, PSIA information and research chair and BlastAsia CEO, led the launch of the group in a meeting with key officers of PSIA’s information and research committee.
Maity, who is also a co-founder of the PD/SIG, said the group has already come up with achievable goals for the next five years.
These goals, he said, could take two directions: one is without funding and the other is with annual funding.
For the first direction, the PD/SIG will embark on project management seminars, co-sharing of marketing workshops and best practice seminars among members, and establish knowledge sharing and mentoring between experienced and new members of the PSIA.
As for the direction with funding, the organization said the PD/SIG will go implement scheduled classroom-type sessions on capability development, courtesy of the Asian Institute of Management (AIM) and the Mapua Institute of Technology (MIT).
There will also be product pitching to venture capitalists, which will be modeled after Silicon Valley investment activities, according to the PSIA.
The group is also considering on competitions among members with the winners getting subsidized for go-to-market funding. A mentoring program at the AIM will also be included.
“These activities are all geared towards making the software industry in the Philippines globally competitive. The PD/SIG will be seeking more partnerships with the academe and other business entities to fuel the software development industry in the years to come,” Maity said.
Ito Gruet, a founding member of PD/SIG and executive of software company Computer Professionals, said the newly established group of the PSIA will seek to overcome challenges that have held back the growth in the software development and services industry.
She said that local software companies should build a culture of innovation and entrepreneurship as well as introducing better marketing strategies, distribution networks, revenue-generating customer support.
“But most importantly, we’re also challenged by the lack of capitalization. This is what we’re trying to resolve by coming up by these goals where the direction could be on either having funding or no funding,” according to Gruet.
Gruet said that in succeeding meetings, which are scheduled to be held every month, PD/SIG will hold a series of workshops for PSIA members on building business capabilities for software intellectual property (IP) on product development, marketing, and distribution channels.
Joey Gurango, president of Gurango Software and also a PD/SIG founding member, cited his experiences in putting up a software company with low startup cost. Although financial considerations are always a key concern, he also noted the importance of keeping labor and IP assets within the company.
Gurango said companies have to balance their expectations and to remain profitable while reducing costs of operations.
“To grow your revenues, you need to hire more people and keep them utilized. This, however, decreases your profit over time,” he said.
He urges service-based companies to become hybrid — that is, to start developing and marketing software products and move on to become totally software product-based businesses, which promise to produce dramatic increase in business profitability.
“Creating IP assets give a good boost to your profitability because you can sell it over and over again,” he said.
Gurango also added that delivery of software products is no longer a challenge today. He said new types of software products can now be offered through the cloud such as software-as-a-service (SaaS), or micro-applications for mobile devices.