How Big Customers Are Getting It Wrong in the Recession (and Out)
26 May 2009
Yeah, if my post about my parents having sex wouldn’t have been frowned on over at the corporate blog, this one surely would!
There’s a thread going around on a couple of blogs about how MISO is getting it all wrong in the recession. How they need to be more customer focused, and provide more relevant solutions.
What really got me going in Dave’s post was the quote:
What’s the point of selling me shiny new technology which I’m struggling to understand anyway when I need to pay the bills more efficiently but more importantly find new business.
The point is, because that’s what customers are asking for.
Have you ever read an RFP? Do you realize hundreds of questions, most of which are irrelevant to the actual project at hand (and the success of future projects in the pipeline), are put on paper as if there were a simple “yes/no” answer. Then, these RFP’s are passed to vendors with little or no context, and given two weeks to respond. I know customers think we do this stuff all the time, so why not just take what must be standard answers and cut-and-paste them?
Well, that’s not how it works. Products are complex, and so are the answers. Unless you want a gobbledygook explanation of what we do. A great example… both Sytinet (HP) and Actional (Progress) say we discover services. Sure, great. But only one vendor can do it without any a-priori knowledge of the environment (Actional). And, explaining that difference, why it’s important, and how it works/happens is the subject of a thesis length response. In fact, I pick these two products because they are obviously different and complementary, yet can be described with lots of overlapping functionality if kept at a high level.
You might argue, the problem is, as I stated, that products are complex. Yes, they are. But, they are complex at the demands of customers.
Customers want products that solve every possible problem, in every possible use case, for anything they need now, and any standard that might appear in the future.
Sure, some customers, like some vendors, are more extreme than others, but I think this is a two-party problem (sorta like the US Government).
Vendors make complex products to try to meet all customer expectations with one solution. We struggle with differentiation in a world where words have no meaning (here & here), so we need to get into the complex details to differentiate. Customers, on the other hand, have been burnt by useless technology (OK, that’s extreme — let’s say by products that don’t do exactly what the customer needs), so they try to solve the problem with hundreds of feature requests whether they need them or not. So they know they’re protected.
Personally, I think the answer is simpler, purpose-specific products that work more easily (install and integrate) and intuitively (user experience) and customers who shop for what they need.
PS Since I know customer will continue with those really long question-filled RFP’s, please do a me a favor and add one more question at the very end of your RFP’s: “With respect to all those features vendor said they support above, can I use them all at the same time?”
