Ukraine's Prospects

Due to Market Visio's research, volume of Ukrainian IT-services export in 2003 was estimated to be $70M, 40% more in comparison with 2002. The market prospects for 2005 were to be $150M; that is three times more in three years.

There are about 300 public companies that work for export. They are located mainly in big cities such as Kyiv, Donetsk, Kharkiv, Dnipropetrovsk etc. There are also a huge amount of groups of professionals who are mainly engaged in export on a level of freelancers. The total number of IT specialists engaged in IT-export services was about 10,000 in 2003 and grew considerably during next years.

Everything mentioned above shows that Ukraine has great prospects to become and equal player to most known leaders of market. Its well-developed IT infrastructure, level of services, and professionalism of programmers made Ukrainian companies able to compete for complex and complicated projects with other well-known developers. There are several companies that invest in their own software solutions and market them internationally with success. However, all of them are engaged into smaller or bigger software development projects as subcontractors.

The next step of Ukrainian gait into world IT market seems to be a wide establishment of offshore development centers based on currently existing software development companies. Prerequisites are obvious:

1. Ukrainian IT companies have whole infrastructure required to develop reliable custom application and deliver it in time.
2. The gross yearly expenditure per one programmer will vary from $20,000 to $30,000.
3. Ukraine's time zone is GMT +02:00. Hence, all programmers and project managers will be available on daytime for any European company.

The only thing remains to be done, though. Ukrainian IT companies are making only their first steps in self-promotion. The more professional they become in this field, more obvious it would be that Ukraine becomes a competitive player on world software outsourcing market.

The second is health of recipent. Do you think your diabetic customer is going to rave about basket of candy? Giving a bottle of wine to an alchoholic can be fatal, do you know situation of all recipents of these kinds of consumable gifts.

If you are giving a gift for marketing purposes and you want to remind customer of your business consumable items are usually gone in a week or less and memory is gone too! Giving gifts that are long lasting such as picture frames or annual passes to sporting events will increase chance of your client remembering your kindness long after gift is given.

Careful attention to your data base and client and employee information can give you an edge when planning gift giving. Companies like Lasting Impressions 2 will keep and maintain client and employee lists with information about hobbies and interests, family size and past gifts given, to make each year a memorable one. Increasing your client and employee loyalty.