We don’t fit in your box – and that’s just fine with us.
Posted in Digital Strategy,User Experience,Web Analytics,Web Engagement Management by Dave Scalera on September 5th, 2012
There’s a lot of buzz and chatter going on around the usefulness of Analyst and Research reports these days. Being in the vendor space for over a decade, I have come to (sometimes) love and (sometimes) hate the ‘game’ of trying to get my organization’s little black vendor dot as high on the right, or with as many full pie matrices, or the maximum amount of checkboxes in these various reports. It’s amazing the amount of time and energy that some organizations take to answer questions the perfect way, build the perfect demo, and spin their story in just the right way to make the analyst raise their mark just a few millimeters from their previous evaluation. You sometimes wonder how successful these organizations would be if they took the same amount of time and effort on their customer projects.
I work for a firm today that doesn’t show up on too many of these various reports. The reasons it doesn’t are similar to the reasons others don’t – we don’t fit into the box that analysts have defined as a “pure” software company. Well, that’s a perfect reason to not educate and inform the buying audience about us, right? Interestingly enough, we’ve been vastly successful at competing against many organizations that find themselves LEADING on these reports, or even others that are RIDING THE WAVE.
The REAL STORY here is that what customers really want at the end of the day is a successful solution. This industry of WCMS, WXMS, WEM – whatever other acronym defines it for you today – has been plagued for over a decade with botched implementations, oversold software, and unhappy customers. And there are plenty of people to blame – there has certainly been some crappy software unleashed, some poor implementation methodologies followed, and even some misguided analysts.
You sometimes wonder how successful these organizations would be if they took the same amount of time and effort on their customer projects.
But it isn’t all bad news! There are some great solution providers out there that can even make underwhelming software sing a nice tune. There are some software solutions that have really improved, really simplified what was formerly truly complex. The battle shouldn’t be over whether to choose a software first and then a solution provider second, though – or vice-versa. The answer this industry needs is in finding the best balance of both. This balance might come from a single solution provider or it might require the difficult work of playing matchmaker – or providing the right amount of stability – between both software and service provider. Beware of choosing one and aligning with their choice for the other – that choice might not necessarily be YOUR best choice…. It might be THEIR best choice… or even just who’s next in line for a lead.
So I leave two audiences with questions that they should consider:
- Analysts – Does your research actually provide the best tools for customers to find success?
- Buyers – Are you ready to hang your hat of success on some of the same methodologies that have lead to more than a decade of unsatisfied customers?
As for me – and the success I see for my customers – I’m just fine not fitting in those boxes.
I love this. I’ve been in the game for a while now as an analyst, and I founded DCG earlier this year with a few others *specifically* to address this problem. I respect most (not all) of the research from my analyst colleagues in the industry, but I fear that much of it, while well-intentioned, has become mis-information for many technology buyers. I could write for days about many of the flaws, but I guess the point of yours that I’ll echo is that all of it emphasizes the technology over the “solution”. And the solution necessarily includes the professional services team, the buying organization’s specific context/needs, various process, strategy, people/governance, etc. None of that far-more-important-stuff fits neatly into an analyst report intended for the masses, nor does it fit on a chart, graph, wave, quadrant, etc. It’s the very reason we (DCG) are focused on matching services providers with technology for our clients (buyers), as well as fully understanding the client’s needs and the elements of the project essential to making the long-term project successful. It’s also the reason we DO cover Bridgeline. Whether a vendor provides it’s own services or works with partners is no matter to us…the key is that there’s a level of fluency between the two, a mutual commitment to each other and to the client, as well as a fit skills-wise.
Lots more to say, but I’ll cut it off here. Check CMS-Connected later this month…I’ll think I’ll spend 4 mins ranting about it over there as well.
Dave,
Good piece with some salient and relevant points. Kudos.
Yes, at the end of the day, clients need a holistic solution and it should be irrelevant what the product/service/customization mix is. Now, clearly, there are some considerations when it comes to long-term maintenance and total life cycle costs but these are manageable with good version control, configuration management and governance. No spring chicken myself, I have seen plenty of projects fail due to good platforms being poorly implemented and just as many go awry due to the selection of an inappropriate system. And, to be honest, I have been involved in some of these failures but have also helped turn some of them around.
It’s easy to blame misleading analyst reports and software vendors who over-promised but, at the end of the day, it is the client (and their consultant) who are responsible for conducting a thorough needs analysis and proper due diligence, And this is where things fall down all too often. I have seen clients rush headlong into the platform selection process without solid analysis, business requirements, use-cases, persona, etc. How can one select a system without actual requirements, you ask? Well, not very well.
And herein lies the crux of the matter: every system has strengths and weaknesses and there are many factors that will ultimately determine platform suitability. But, without a solid understanding of your functional, business and technical requirements, you’re just guessing. As the old adage says, if you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there.
In some ways software selection can be compared to investing. Investors want high returns with minimal risk exposure. Software buyers want to find the perfect fit with the minimal amount of resources.
Neither of these things really exist, but analyst reports in some ways fulfill the sw buyer’s fantasy of getting the right answer with the minimal effort. They also provide a bit of cover a la the old “Nobody every got fired for buying IBM” axiom. These are seductive stories that sell well — especially when buyers are resource constrained.
In a perfect world analyst reports should be treated as data points with confidence values associated with them. They serve a purpose, but need to be thought of as just a part of the process. The fact that very reasonable and useful vendors don’t even appear in report M, R or W supports this perspective.
So three cheers for useful comparative reports. But caveat emptor, there’s more to the story (ahem, be sure to read http://www.cmswire.com). And I’ll echo what Scott and Dave are saying — the implementation team is key to project success and definitely part of the solution. Overlooking that piece is folly.