VietNamNet Bridge – The lack of
specific products for different specific clients and the lack of long term
market development plans are the biggest weak points of Vietnamese software
companies.

Several
years ago, a company which specialized in developing software products for the
healthcare sector was put on sale. At that time, the offer did not catch the
attention of many investors. Meanwhile, an enterprise had sent words that it
would buy the company if it has the opportunity.

One of the
two enterprises has the staff, who were once physicians and doctors. Therefore,
it has gained certain achievements with the marketed products, thanks to the
deep knowledge about healthcare. Meanwhile, the other is a leading technology
company which has big advantages in techniques, but does not have deep
knowledge about healthcare. They have realized that they can only develop well
if they can settle their problems.

Many software companies born, but
few can survive

The above
story is a typical example which shows the weak points of software companies.
The majority of Vietnamese software companies have small scale and weak
financial capability. They cannot draw up reasonable long term market
development strategies, lack professional business skills and bear hard
pressure from technology changes. Meanwhile, some big enterprises, which have
big operation scale, financial and technical capability, are seriously lacking
the staff who have the deep knowledge on specific fields.

A lot of
software companies came out in the society prior to 2000, but only a few have existed.
The survivors are mostly the ones which design accountancy software products
and provide the products to state management agencies.

The big
problem now is that businesses can be born, but cannot grow up, and many good
products cannot be brought up, because companies cannot survive the severe
living conditions.

The
products, which were made in Vietnam,
but they are simply the re-production of foreign solutions, have been
eliminated. Many other products have been welcomed by the market, but the
owners have to struggle hard to compete with foreign solutions which have been
distributed in a diversified way and produced by the experts with deep
knowledge in many fields.

The success
of enterprises not only depends on whether they have good products, but also on
many other factors, including the capability of market analyzing, production
marketing, and on the budget on building apparatus and developing products. A
lot of software companies had to leave the market, because the software trade
could not bring them the sufficient income.

According
to Pham Anh Chien, General Director of FPT Software, the bad copyright
protection is now a big headache to enterprises these days. There is no
effective tool to effectively protect software products in the current
conditions of the legal framework. This explains why enterprises do not want to
spend money on making investments.

Thorough care needed to develop the
market

According
to Chien, software companies can succeed only when they can satisfy the
specific demand from enterprises, or localities and agencies, where foreign
software products cannot reach out.

The fierce
competition in the fields of finance and banking, steel, real estate has forced
the investors to spend money on information technology solutions. Therefore,
the demand for the software products has been increasing from the fields.
However, the fields are the “land” of foreign solutions.

According
to Tran Luong Son, General Director of VietSoftware, state budget-funded
information technology (IT), projects worth tens of billions of dong are the
big opportunities for domestic companies. However, he said that companies have
to face big risks when implementing the projects, and that they cannot see the
stability to ensure business prospects.

For a long
time, IT projects have been managed like normal products and they have to go
through complicated investment procedures, while these should be seen as
creative and special products.

Source: TBKTSG