THE CHALLENGE - Information technology is considered the springboard for leaps and bounds in drug discovery technologies in the post-genomic era. Drug discovery is now in its second generation and highly dependent on IT products for its actualization and productivity. The different functions within the drug discovery process in the life sciences industry now require and will require vast amounts of data to be stored and analyzed by high- to super-performance computing speeds. A dominant IT player in the global market needed to take advantage of this market opportunity and entrench itself as a leader in this industry.

THE PROCESS - Frost & Sullivan's research and consulting teams undertook a feasibility study of the global market opportunity and sized this opportunity in seven life sciences market segments for each of the regions and of the product markets in which they competed. A demand-side research approach was taken to assess and estimate future demand for products in each of the market segments. In a subsequent phase, customer perceptions of products and vendors were examined to determine where the major players were positioned with respect to the client. This enabled us to map the competitive advantages of the client with respect to mind share and market share of its competitors. In the third phase of the project, we examined the current and future demand for IT products along the drug discovery value chain.

THE SOLUTION - We helped our client develop its business strategy by identifying the markets that are not only high growth for IT products, but also where there is potential to increase its market share in product categories it competes in. The product market sizing was also used to develop sales quotas for the sales force.