Highly Competitive - software industry insights

IT + Marketing: Innovation Through Collaboration in B2B Software Companies

 

I’ve read a lot of articles and posts that have discussed various aspects of the uneasy relationship (in many cases) between IT groups and Marketing groups. The people and process side of this ongoing situation puts me in mind of the obstacles and needs for the adoption of a collaboration culture in software companies. For the purpose of this article, collaboration means: talking to each other, listening to each other, analyzing and planning in concert, presence of mutual respect – no silos, no turf wars. Good intent, good communication -- bi-directional and legitimate. The kind of enterprise collaboration where teams work together for common cause: business success, growth, innovation, getting the work done well.

Whether it’s dubbed “IT working with Marketing”, or “Enterprise Collaboration”, upper management has the same responsibility to encourage and sponsor all types of necessary and differentiating collaboration to achieve business goals in ways that are better, faster, and smoother. Unfortunately for many software companies, upper management is not stepping up to enable and empower useful collaborations, particularly cross-departmental. Upper management in this context means CEO, CFO, COO -- all too often, the CIO and the CMO are not accorded power over the decisions coming from these other roles.

 Ben Horowitz on the ‘Innovation Business’:

The technology business is fundamentally the innovation business. Etymologically, the word technology means “a better way of doing things.” As a result, innovation is the core competency for technology companies. Technology companies are born because they create a better way of doing things. Eventually, someone else will come up with a better way. Therefore, if a technology company ceases to innovate, it will die.

Collaboration frequently is a very good way for software company teams to not only work for company success, but to better innovate. Innovation in software companies should not only be about products and solutions; it should be about how the company itself works as a thriving and growing organism, how it empowers staff to be successful on the company’s behalf.

  

Neither IT Nor Marketing Is A Monolithic Being Calling Its Own Shots…

Contrary to popular belief, the “modern” IT group did not spring up fully formed as an autonomous entity that makes decisions in a vacuum. Obviously an exaggeration, but I think a lot of people have this notion in the back of their minds when considering the role of IT. With a startup, the IT team may be more focused on digital infrastructure: hardware, telephony, internet, internal systems. As the company grows and different kinds of employees are added, IT grows too. If the software company IPOs, then the IT group is heavily involved in compliance, security, ensuring always-on performance, and so on. Internal systems may become more complex and numerous, employees more virtual, hardware and infrastructure demands more sophisticated.

Frequently the result is that IT groups become silo’d, but usually not by their own design. Upper management sets the agenda for IT groups and usually holds responsibility for the positioning of IT as separate from the rest of the company.  In recent years, most IT groups have suffered through significant staff cuts while more has been piled on the remaining staff. Upper management then expects instant change from IT to better support the business -- without sufficient resources – and particularly without a strong collaboration culture in place.

Marketing groups are in the same boat as IT regarding who decides their destinies. Software companies in startup mode have a history of adding Marketing functions in haphazard fashion. Many startups still look at “marketing” as something to slap on when the sales team needs more help finding buyers. The reality is that for most software companies, Marketing is an important component of the Business, just as IT is.  But too often, upper management misses the strategic opportunities to do it right – to build teams working together, instead of separately and frequently in conflict.

 

Strategy, Business and Tech

IT has been the target over past several years in companies that rightfully want IT to be more aligned with the strategic needs of the business. IT has received black marks for not moving quickly, not feeding innovation, and so on. Balance this criticism of IT with the reality that upper management usually has a big hand in the current state of IT affairs.

Eric Brown frequently addresses the future of IT with a strong dose of reality:

What’s missing in most of the articles I’ve run across about reinventing IT or changing IT is the effect the Business has had on IT. You can’t really reinvent or change something unless you know the how and why behind the creation of that entity in the first place.

…at the end of the year, the grades are handed out.  Sometimes IT fails. Sometimes IT over-achieves. …most times, IT gets a barely passing grade.

Is this barely passing grade (or failing grade) due to incompetence or mismanagement? Most times it’s not…most times it’s due to changing priorities that aren’t clearly thought through and/or communicated throughout the organization

 And who creates the constantly changing priorities? Upper management.

Harvard Business Review also weighs in on the future of IT:

The authority and responsibility for IT-enabled business outcomes needs to be aligned. The CIO's dilemma…is the challenge of promoting innovation while increasing efficiency. IT is in the untenable position of being held responsible for this even though their business partners control the decisions that impact their ability to do so.

IT governance is really business governance. In many organizations, IT has led the way in implementing governance over critical decisions related to strategy, business architecture, investments, change, programs, risk and sourcing. Over time, organizations have realized that decisions in these areas need to be coordinated across the enterprise and have elevated and consolidated these activities outside and above IT.

This isn't your grandmother's technology. "Technologies for collaboration, business intelligence, and customer interface all require experimentation and iteration" and a hands-on relationship between workers and their technology. Increasingly, the technology necessary to assemble, deploy and operate technology will be provisioned by external providers freeing up internal IT resources to focus on the meaty issues of coaching users on how to exploit the technology and ensure horizontal integration, security, continuity, and performance across the extended enterprise.

 

Marketing + IT  <>  Business + Tech

For many B2B software companies, Customers are now Buyers, many of whom want to drive the relationship and buying cycle, moving sharply away from the former sales-team-focused cycles. The customer experience with the company has gained importance; many company-centric processes must give over to processes with a strong customer focus. Both Marketing and IT have important roles in customer engagement, with marketing technology growing in sophistication and variety. But in most companies the IT group carries the additional responsibility of working with multiple disparate internal constituencies, with priorities determined by project portfolio management, internal politics, and by decisions from upper management.

When IT resources are not easily available to support time-sensitive initiatives, marketing groups have frequently implemented their own technology solutions as a form of Shadow IT. New approaches to effective customer engagement lean heavily on cloud/SaaS based technologies that are fast to set up and use by non-IT staff. Unfortunately a significant side effect of not including the IT group has led to problems: new data silos, separate operations and analytics – lack of integration with other systems in the company.

As cited in a recent post by Cheryl Burgess, the current and frequent state of finger-pointing and lack of mutual respect between IT and Marketing is summed up by Chris Murphy of  InformationWeek:

IT sees marketing as looking for shortcuts, shortcuts that will come back to bite the organization. Marketing, meanwhile, sees IT slowing them down, not delivering on the operational basics, and not understanding marketing needs.

Burgess also points to an Accenture-sponsored study involving over 300 CMO’s and 300 CIO’s that presented this view of Marketing + IT:

The CMO Council believes there is a global imperative for marketing and IT organizations, which too often have been polarized and adversarial, to find common ground around the business of innovating more efficient, effective and measurable ways to target, acquire and stay intimately connected to customers. The need for greater synchronization, partnership and collaboration between these two groups has never been more critical to their mutual success.

 

The Marketing Technologist: Success More Likely With IT and Marketing In Collaboration

Frequently, companies gain better paths to innovation, collaboration and competitiveness with the presence of business-technology hybrids who span departments and leverage cross-team expertise. The demands of innovation, meeting customer needs, and rapidly changing solution markets are challenging software companies to work much more quickly and collaboratively than ever before.

An important hybrid is the marketing technologist. Scott Brinker has published an extensive and well-crafted piece on the rise of the marketing technologist, describing “technology-powered marketing” where “Marketing must take ownership of the technology in its domain”. Some of Brinker’s observations on the marketing technologist hybrid:

As marketers, you're already responsible for the outcomes based on such technology. The accountability so widely promoted in digital marketing has you in the hot seat for results. It's only sensible that you should have full control over the means and mechanisms to deliver those results.

You must be the driver of marketing technology, not merely a concerned passenger. But if you don't have technical depth, who can help you navigate? …I propose a new role in the marketing department: a marketing CTO or chief marketing technologist. The mission of the marketing CTO is to provide that technology navigation.

 Brinker makes the case for highly functional collaborations between IT and Marketing:

..technology decisions and marketing strategy are intertwined. You can't address one without impacting the other.

 Brinker also profiles the ‘3 Spheres of Marketing Technology’: “All these technologies — the ones we buy, the ones we build upon — can be categorized into three overlapping spheres”:

                    

                    

 

Customer-Focused / Technology-Driven Marketing: Attract More Buyers

In 2008, Booz & Company published its view of the growing integration of marketing strategies with technology, “Not Your Typical Marketing Campaign – The Next Wave of Technology-Driven Marketing”:

Next-generation direct marketing demands a front-to-back rethink of the overall IT architecture, with the ultimate goal of better understanding the customer... In the past, each channel would feed customer information individually into the back-end customer relationship management (CRM) and enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems that processed transactions and held much of the customer data. Using the new architecture, all of those channels now connect to a central integrated engine. This engine, available throughout the network, mediates between channels and the customer data and back-end processing. The central campaign engine also contains the business rules that govern every interaction with every customer.

The single most critical innovation, however, lies in doing away with the typical siloed, channel-specific archi­tecture on which most current direct marketing and campaigning technol­ogy depends. No customer-centric marketing effort can be truly success­ful if the technology is still organized around interaction channels, rather than those all-important customers who naturally interact with the busi­ness through multiple channels.

Each step of the way will require the willingness to rethink your overall marketing strategy, the tactical processes by which you plan and carry out each campaign, and the IT tools you need. You must develop the skills required to design and execute analytic campaigns and, of course, you will need to build the technologies to enable those cam­paigns.

 Most important, from begin­ning to end, the CIO and the CMO must work together as partners to design, build, and test the necessary infrastructure, and to expand it, step by step, throughout your company.

 

Marketing Technology + IT: Marketing ERP?

Looking at the transition from channel silos to a more integrated marketing technology platform brings up the notion of Marketing “ERP” to provision, manage and analyze initiatives supported by marketing tech. Egbert Hendriks @ephendriks introduces this notion (whether seriously or tongue-in-cheek) in a recent exchange on Twitter with Kevin Cochrane @kevinc2003:

@ephendriks RT @niels_goossen: Why Marketing Should Run Its Own Technology -- InformationWeek http://bit.ly/dRaLSs

@phendriks: I agree- marketing is becoming a technology-driven discipline. #wcm #dam #vms #bpms integrate in a marketing "ERP"!

@kevinc2003: @ephendriks what do you see as being a marketing "ERP"? Interested in your perspective / insights

 

From the Booz & Company paper:  the diagram to the right below could suggest a path to a Marketing ERP platform. Also be sure to note the transition from channel silos on left, to a more integrated marketing technology platform on right.

 

 
 
http://www.booz.com/global/home/what_we_think/reports_and_white_papers/ic-display/47189813

 

Indeed, marketing has been increasingly technology-driven, relying on marketing management platforms, analytics (multiple), various software systems for content (WCM, WEM, DAM), BPM, VMS (vertical marketing system), social media, lead gen, mobile/multichannel management. We could also throw in MDM, CRM, data/application integration processes, other reporting.

BUT – at this point, the answer to building out highly effective marketing technology systems incorporating the best of Marketing and IT is not found in throwing more tech at the situation. Nor is creating a new software category going to help.

A better approach is the enablement and empowerment of IT and Marketing working as true collaborative partners, where upper management fully supports the elimination of silos and frees up IT to work on strategic initiatives. Software companies still have lots of people and process matters to figure out first. Innovate how the company works together as teams with common purpose. Collaboration culture can lead to and encourage innovation culture, both of which can lead to business success and competitive agility.

 

  

Related Links

I have a confession to make:  I am a Hybrid

Internal Disruption–No Longer Business As Usual

Levels of Social – and Integration – Cut Across Enterprises

Shallow Thinking Ensures Bad Business Decisions

 

About the author: Julie Hunt is an accomplished software industry analyst, providing strategic market and competitive insights. Her 20+ years as a software professional range from the very technical side to customer-centric work in solutions consulting, sales and marketing.  Julie shares her takes on the software industry via her blog Highly Competitive and on Twitter: @juliebhunt   For more information: Julie Hunt Consulting – Strategic Product & Market Intelligence Services

 

 

Achieving the Social Business, Inside and Out

 

For the past few years, companies have been exploring initiatives internally and externally that dance around the notion of “social” methods for engaging all of the people in an enterprise ecosystem - to bring about better results for these companies. These social methods have been described with terminology such as “enterprise 2.0”, “social computing”, “web 2.0”, “social media”, and so on. The evolution of these social methods has led now to another term: the Social Business.

I find the term “Social Business” a necessary one:  to remind companies that people are very important to their success: customers, employees, partners, suppliers, and so on. I see the term “Social Business” encompassing what companies might become to engage people - inside and out – to achieve business goals, and frankly, to stay in business. Again looking at terms in common usage: Enterprise 2.0 has been concerned with the “inside” (I call it social collaboration) and social media / web 2.0 have been concerned with the “outside” (external-facing customer engagement). A blurring between Social Inside and Social Outside has begun, partly driven by the adoption of customer-facing social media tools by internal collaboration programs.   

A lot of the conversation for the ins and outs of social these days has focused on technology and practices - and even on “naming conventions” - but People as the focus is what really makes a difference for a business to achieve success. People participating in the “Social Business” are cross-generational: there are lots of people of all ages who are savvy about collaboration, communication, social media, respecting colleagues and customers – none of these activities are the sole turf of any generation. And I’ll repeat: the focus on the value of People and trust in what they can accomplish (not just on tech and practices or processes) is at the heart of healthy companies.

Why does a renewed - and authentic - interest in People matter to a business? From the customer perspective, much has been written about customers now driving relationships with businesses where businesses listen to what customers want, like and don’t like. From the perspective of employees and partners, a great deal of what companies need comes from people:  innovation, creativity, ideas for new directions, passion, enthusiasm, customer relationships, knowledge, experience, judicious consideration, and so on. 

The Human factor always has to be distinctly considered in anything called “social” -- otherwise it’s just a buzzword shell game. First there must be authentic respect for all the people in the enterprise ecosystem; then enterprises can work on building out social practices that consider the human element – afterwards, apply technology and processes where they make sense.

  

Value of Social Business - Inside

In enterprise activities such as collaboration, knowledge management, business intelligence, business process management, adaptive case management, there is a significant role to be played by social capabilities to improve how these activities perform and provide relevance and results. Social business on the inside is also rightfully tied to enterprise collaboration and intranets that are taking on more social media type capabilities. Many software solutions are including social capabilities as methods to improve solution usage and value, as well as do a better job of incorporating the importance of the human element.

For example, Business Process Management (BPM) solutions encompass practices and tools that are evolving and including more people-oriented methods in terms of social collaboration capabilities. Forrester’s Clay Richardson comments:

Enterprise social – and social BPM by extension – is seeing healthy adoption in industries and organizations that have open cultures and have a need to innovate and share ideas quickly. Although it might seem counterintuitive, we’re seeing the greatest adoption of social BPM patterns in the healthcare and public sector – specifically in defense.

Sandy Kemsley, independent analyst and systems architect for enterprise infrastructure, also understands well the people side of business:

Tom Davenport recently wrote about the need to add structure to social in order to bring enterprise value: Transaction systems like ERP and CRM, tools for workflow and document management, and project management systems all made it more clear to people what they need to do next in their jobs. That capability has undoubtedly led to productivity gains.

But work effectiveness also demands that people share their knowledge and expertise with each other. That’s where social media comes in. It makes it easy to reach out to others for help in making a decision or taking an action. And the transfer of knowledge through social media doesn’t require a lot of difficult knowledge management work in advance.

Business Intelligence is another software solution space that is looking at building in collaborative layers throughout the BI lifecycle. The possibilities for new applications of analytics increase with collaboration. Inviting in many-to-many interactions also opens up processes to new ideas from participants. Gartner found that social venues and collaboration help to track and capture outcomes of the decisions made based on BI / analytics:

Gartner's user surveys show that improved decision making is the key driver of BI purchases. However, most BI deployments emphasize information delivery and analysis to support fact-based decision making, but fail to link BI content with the decision itself, the decision outcome, or with the related collaboration and other decision inputs. This makes it impossible to capture decision-making best practices. Solutions are emerging that tie BI with social software and collaborative tools for higher-quality, more transparent decisions that will increase the value derived from BI applications.

Promoting social on the inside draws on the rich value that lies in the many people who populate the enterprise.

  

Value of Social Business - Outside

Social media and social CRM solutions and practices are gaining interest and usage as means to work with customers throughout the customer lifecycle with the company. Social media and social CRM also play important roles for connecting the Social Business-Inside with the Social Business-Outside.

Social media is not just the latest fad in marketing; and to really work, social media is not “one-size-fits-all”.  Enterprises must understand how a go-to-market strategy that includes social media will help with objectives and obligations; then enterprises must figure out which social media to use and why. Social media commitments require an authentic personal touch, both for how customers are communicating with the enterprise, and how the enterprise responds and sustains customer conversations.

Maria Ogneva comments on the social customer and social CRM:

The ability for everyone to engage and be in alignment: Social media is not a silo, and no one department owns it. There must be a process in place by which each message gets automatically routed to the right person, classifying it by type (question, complaint or compliment), content (what it actually said), sentiment, action needed, and influence. This helps automate the triage process, which until now has been mostly manual.

Jeremiah Owyang’s work with brands employing social media to better connect and support customers is extensive and well-known. In his presentation on “Three Trends Companies Must Invest in for Social Business”, Owyang introduces the notion of Rings of Social Influence which include employees as company ambassadors for communicating with customers, as well as these recommended best practices for such employees:   

• Establish guardrails to protect both employees and the company
• Offer internal training courses, (like Intel’s certification program) and recurring training
• Offer an internal water cooler where they can talk in a safe place and plan: Yammer, Socialcast, Community Platforms

And of course companies must recognize the power of the customer voice and consider Owyang’s recommended best practices for customers active in social media:

• For better or worse, customers are already talking about you – how can you aggregate their voices closer to your brand?
• Develop an advocacy program to recognize and reward your top customers.
• Change your mindset to understanding that critical feedback is an opportunity for product and service improvements – then use to increase loyalty and WOM.

 

Social Business Equation: Inside + Outside = Eliminate silos

Many enterprises are understanding the value of social media to better engage and retain customers, to attract prospects, make sales, help customers solve problems: Social Business - Outside. But it seems to be much harder for enterprises to understand social on the inside and why that matters. Enterprises must come to understand that social on the outside won’t be substantially achieved – let alone sustained - if social on the inside isn’t working.

Social on the inside pertains to all company teams that touch customers, prospects, partners, and suppliers – basically the vast majority of the company.  The commitment, usage and value of social on the inside and the outside must be real – employees, partners, customers will quickly figure out if a company is faking it.  With healthy social practices inside a company, the support and growth of social for any interactions involving the enterprise human ecosystem – inside and out – should then be a natural and vital part of overall company strategy.

Here are the big questions:

1. Can the enterprises that need to, change quickly enough to re-humanize?
2. More importantly, will enterprises even choose to change?

This change – understanding and nurturing the value of all the people in the enterprise ecosystem – impacts how the company operates internally, how it does business externally, how the company effectively engages the human ecosystem that is truly needed for the company to survive as a successful business – inside and out.

From this change comes these rewards:  big impact on continuous innovation / relevant product development, drawing the best out of employees, collaborating with customers and partners on future direction and products, listening to all of the people in the enterprise ecosystem to draw on their experiences and expertise for building and sustaining competitive edge >> all contributing to the success and relevance of company.

The strategic decision to become the social business has to come from upper management and boards of directors – it has to be a key aspect of the enterprise – or it won’t happen in any significant or sustained fashion. When an enterprise chooses to become a “social business”, the divide between social-inside and social-outside should blur as more and more as silos within the enterprise hopefully disappear, and as bi-directional connections to customers and prospects, partners and suppliers become more authentic and more immediate.

 

                                                                <<<<<              >>>>>

Jeremiah Owyang has produced a very good starting point for depicting the Social Business Stack, expressed in terms of technology. I’ve added a “reminder” element to his diagram:

 

 
 
 

 

Related Links

Social collaboration in enterprise:The heart–and goal–of Community is “collaborating people”, not collaboration tools

Levels of Social – and Integration – Cut Across Enterprises

The Ever-Expanding Importance of Analytics–True Intelligence for Business

The Effective Intranet – Engaging the Employee as Customer

I have a confession to make: I am a Hybrid – business technology hybrids bring real value to company competitiveness

  

About the author: Julie Hunt is an accomplished software industry analyst, providing strategic market and competitive insights. Her 20+ years as a software professional range from the very technical side to customer-centric work in solutions consulting, sales and marketing.  Julie shares her takes on the software industry via her blog Highly Competitive and on Twitter: @juliebhunt   For more information: Julie Hunt Consulting – Strategic Product & Market Intelligence Services

 

Content Marketing Strategy for B2B Software Vendors: Starring the ‘New’ White Paper

 

For the past several years, multiple studies by different research firms have been conducted to evaluate the most sought-out and influential content for B2B technology customers during decision-making buying cycles, and every time, in every study, the #1 preferred content is the White Paper.

The white paper is the #1 most influential piece of collateral that technology purchasers consult when making or influencing a buying decision for their company, according to a recent survey by Eccolo Media

However, many B2B software vendors still are missing the boat with their use of white papers and have not employed them in ways to engage potential buyers, let alone convert them to customers.

  

In The Beginning…

Technology white papers find their origins in government briefs that were called white books, alluding to the plain white binding that was used. With the transformation to the technology white paper, experts, lead architects, systems designers used these documents to provide authoritative discussions of key ideas or technologies to show thought leadership and future direction. The classic white paper was very technical and dissertation-like, rich with in-depth details and research results.

Then something happened to white papers when many software companies began to generate them as “product collateral”. White papers were hijacked by many product marketing and marketing groups to directly promote products. Content became thinly veiled product brochures extolling the virtues of the software offerings, highlighting information favorable to the vendor. White papers became just another item in the checklist of collateral to generate for a product launch. Little strategic thinking or advance planning went into creating white papers, including the recruitment of a top tech professional to write the white paper. Well, guess what: software solution buyers do not like that kind of white paper.

 When asked what most disappointed in a white paper, poor writing ranked number one.

 One surprise in the findings – the respondents said they're more disappointed when a white paper doesn't contain enough technical information rather than when a paper contains too much.

 

 What Potential Buyers Want In Effective White Papers

Quality Quality Quality

Customers continue to call out high quality writing with accurate and useful content as top values for the white papers that they want to read and use. They want plenty of details (tech / business), which means content has to be: tight, clear, compelling, authentic.

The survey also found that the quality of report writing gets noticed. Some 86% of respondents felt that high-quality writing was at least moderately influential and 51% ranked good writing as either very or extremely influential. By contrast, poor quality writing was the most frequent reason respondents gave for decreasing the influence of a white paper.

 

Less Time to Consume Content

A lot of great content is constantly published on the web, due largely to constant brisk evolution of business needs and corresponding software solutions. Customers would like to consume a large variety of content, so they prefer shorter lengths for white papers. Shorter white papers also allow vendors to generate a constant flow of new content that also keeps pace with business and tech changes. According to most of the studies cited in this article, the ideal length of a white paper is 4-8 pages. (Tech Marketing Best Practices Research Series on white papers states that 86% of tech buyers want white papers under 10 pages.)

 

Buyers are proactive in the use of white papers:

How to Maximize the Use of White Papers in Your B2B Marketing and Sales Process, released by InformationWeek in February 2009. Its survey of 542 professional buyers found that 93% of IT buyers pass along up to half of the white papers they read/download, and that 54% of those surveyed contacted a vendor for more information after reading a white paper.

 

No Registration Please

When marketing groups co-opted the white paper another marketing staple was added: requiring buyer registration to be able to download the white paper. There is a strong buyer sentiment that vendor websites should not require any information from the buyer for any content downloads.  After all, the sales engagement is buyer-driven, with the buyer deciding when and if next steps will be taken.

A recent survey done by Spiceworks (SMB IT management resource site) addressed the issue of having to register for white papers:

We also found a lot of people – more than 75% – DON'T sign up for papers requiring registration, which means the vendor is missing the opportunity to share and disseminate their knowledge.

         How many (vendors) stopped requiring registration as the result of your survey?

A handful so far. The results are pretty staggering. When you remove the "registration wall," downloads go way up. One white paper that was offered without registration was downloaded 500 times in three days!

  

White Papers and Content Marketing Strategies

Potential buyers visit B2B corporate websites with the intent of finding all kinds of information that will help with purchase decisions. Buyers also look for vendor information on other web venues. It is critical for any vendors who see web presence as a key to success to build a strategy for content marketing. A content marketing strategy for B2B software vendors should focus on providing relevant, compelling, and frequently updated information for target markets and customers/buyers. A high quality white paper is a significant business asset for content marketing: quality content holds its value for reusability, engagement, impact, and vendor credibility.

Adam Needles: Content marketing is the architecture behind information exchanged with the buyer before we can get them to ’sales ready’; it is the rationalization of what content that our prospective buyers need at various stages of the buying cycle and via what media and channels; and it is integral to the nurturing process.  Content thus has moved from tactical to strategic.

 

Many B2B software vendors could benefit greatly from building a content marketing strategy around white papers. Don’t just produce single white papers in a reactive fashion, as a product launch checklist item done in a hurry. Plan, create and publish excellent white papers well in advance of any product launches.  B2B software vendors should be publishing white papers with high frequency (since customers want shorter white papers): set the stage for what your company does now and will do in future. Show authentic thought leadership, clear understanding of various customer needs and real problem-solving.

Publishing sets of “companion” white papers is a good idea for vendors targeting buyers with different perspectives such as business and tech buyers, and biz-tech composites. Some white papers can be created to bridge the gap between business and tech, to encourage collaborative definition of needs and problem-solving. Series of white papers that break down a complex topic can be an interesting approach as well. These approaches will show vendor commitment to helping customers understand current technology trends as well as provide guidance for solving problems or for becoming more competitive.

Beyond publishing great white papers is the opportunity for vendors to engage customers in conversations through social media, wherever customers participate. There already is a social aspect to downloaded white papers – customers have a high rate of sharing white papers. Tap into social media for interactive conversations with potential buyers and industry writers. On download pages include links to communities and forums to encourage discussion. Schedule Tweetjams for topics covered in white papers. Comment on blogs that address the topics of vendor white papers, not to directly promote the white paper, but to add to the brainstorm and show command of the topic.

 

Value of white papers for B2B software vendors:

 
 

   

The Right Industry Professional to Create White Papers for B2B Software Vendors

Keeping in mind that customers have made clear that they want high quality content with extensive tech details, it would make sense to work with a software industry professional with strong tech experience, business smarts, and who can articulate complex ideas clearly and authentically. This would be a professional who has worked with customers, understands both business and tech, has the ability to hold the interest of these readers. And of course, this professional has to be a really good writer.

White papers will benefit from a professional who has decent smarts for several software solution categories and who has good hands-on experience on the tech side of software. The business-technology professional should contribute rich insight, produce creative content and original thinking, see unexpected connections and future trends. Direct customer experience enhances an understanding of how tech will help customer competitiveness, and will enable writing from the customer POV.

Another very useful attribute of the right professional would be one who is inter-connected to individuals throughout the software industry: analysts, practitioners, consultants, writers, vendors. A professional who is in constant conversations with other industry SMEs will be up-to-date on key topics and trends, and will have resources at hand for research and confirmation. Quality white papers will result if the professional regularly writes software industry-related articles and blog posts, participates in new product briefings from various vendors and start-ups, and continually monitors several software solution spaces. A business-technology professional who is well-connected in social media can also provide guidance to vendors for content marketing strategies that target white papers and social media.

 

The ‘New’ White Paper:

• Reflecting studies cited: high quality and accurate content, plenty of deep details (tech / business), 8 pages or less which engenders content that is tight, engaging, well-written, inspiring
• Often written from the customer POV, using customer language
• Covers trends that matter: new solution segments – transitions of solutions
• Real takeaways that benefit customers whether they buy the vendor solution or not - vendor is associated with insight to solving problem, doing things in new way that is useful
• Inform, educate at sophisticated level to provide real depth
• Create companion white papers when different customer roles come into play for the topic (business, tech, hybrid/composite)
• Passion in the treatment: blogging has shown that writing about software solutions is more engaging if the writer inserts personality into the work – apply this to white papers when appropriate
• Provoke thought about the solution space: new thinking for addressing needs; provoke desire to find out more;  provoke a conversation that will lead back to the vendor
• Look into employing variety of buyer scenarios to connect customers to relevance of topic
• Infographics, tech details, guidelines, suggested reading, links to other resources (not necessarily on vendor site) – all add to value in buyer eyes
• Format for readability, flow, quick-scanning, engagement
• Publish on the distributed web – not just on corporate site but share on sites frequented by buyers
• Stir the pot: encourage social media conversations through blogs, Twitter, forums, communities, Facebook; also actively contribute comments on relevant blogs
• Not self-serving brochure-ware solely touting vendor offering – but can address issues that matter to buyers that generally could be solved with vendor’s offering

 

Related Links

SMB / Mid-Market B2B Software vendors - Findability + web presence + social: attracting the “customer as buyer”

I have a confession to make: I am a Hybrid

Goodbye Corporate Website – Hello Web Presence Management Framework?

 

  

About the author: Julie Hunt is an accomplished software industry analyst, providing strategic market and competitive insights. Her 20+ years as a software professional range from the very technical side to customer-centric work in solutions consulting, sales and marketing.  Julie shares her takes on the software industry via her blog Highly Competitive and on Twitter: @juliebhunt   For more information: Julie Hunt Consulting – Strategic Product & Market Intelligence Services

 

Time Travel Required: Finding WEM in the 2010 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Web Content Management

 

A few days ago while reading through various articles about the future of websites and web presence, I came across a post by Thomas Baekdal that started off with a look back to the beginnings of web design:

 Back in 1998 designing for the internet was all about 3 things:

Design for the desktop, where the vast majority was using 800x600, with their browser maximized.

Design a website, a place where people could come to you. With emphasize on getting traffic and have them stick around as long as possible.

Optimize for the many search engines, because that was the primary way people would get to you.

But if we fast-forward to today, none of these really matters anymore. You still need them, but they are no longer the best things to do.

  

The reference to 1998 immediately brought to mind the recent Gartner Magic Quadrant for Web Content Management: while the MQ does cover concepts newer than Baekdal’s 1998 list, the basic approach for this MQ is very 1998: it’s déjà vu all over again…

Then I recalled this passage in Jon Marks' post on the 2010 MQ:

Most of these little yellow dots haven’t drifted very far in a year – the report is pretty similar despite the M&A activity that has kept us bloggers busy. So pretty much a repeat of last year.

If I were a police officer, I would be repeating:  Move along, nothing to see here. No offense to most of the vendors in the benchmark, but this MQ does nothing to excite us about the future of websites / WEM / web presence nor does it do much to stimulate buyer interests for finding the right-fit solutions for business needs.  

  

Redux: Moving Beyond WCM - Web Experience Management Software Solutions and Markets

 So I decided to take a look at an article I wrote almost a year ago about understanding WEM (web experience management) markets and solutions: the article includes a reference to the 2009 Gartner MQ for WCM. I wanted to see how many of my reactions to the 2009 MQ would now be different >> answer: none. Which sadly means that not much has changed with this new 2010 Gartner benchmark for providing value to vendors and buyers: 

When it comes to how to select the best-fit Web Content Management (WCM) software, a great deal of confusion continues to haunt vendors and customers alike.  Industry analysts have done little to make this any easier by perpetuating these mistakes:

• Frequently lumping together disparate offerings that target clearly separate customer segments and customer needs
• Failing to segment WCM offerings into solution categories, such as:  Web Experience Management (WEM) for Enterprise, basic web publishing for internal business processes/intranet, mid-market solutions for e-commerce, and so on
• Persisting with the pointless notion that WCM is a functional subset of Enterprise Content Management (ECM), especially in light of the speciousness of the ECM platform; such a notion is even more off-target when considering WEM solutions
• While understanding that WEM solutions are directly tied to interactive/digital marketing initiatives, analyst reports and benchmarks fail to use this understanding as an essential tenet of such reports

  

Looking for WEM?

Web Experience Management has come together as a segment of WCM software solutions and reflects current directions for websites and web presence for certain companies and organizations:

It has been mainly customers who have helped to propel the WCM industry into providing the sorts of capabilities that are really needed for external-facing websites that are central to strategic business objectives.  So a significant segment of the overall WCM market has evolved into Web Experience Management (WEM), for which a much larger solution ecosystem has come together.  Most Web Experience Management platforms have little to do with basic content management or basic web publishing (à la WordPress and TypePad), and even less to do with the so-called ECM (enterprise content management) platform. 

A more complete WEM solution description includes:

• Understanding of solutions for B2B, B2C web/marketing initiatives
• Sophisticated digital / interactive marketing strategies
• External-facing web presence / multi-channel content delivery
• Website essential to corporate business strategy
• Ecosystem of ancillary tools to complete end-to-end solution for customer objectives
• Savvy use of social media, well-integrated into website and marketing plans
• Alignment with interactive/digital agencies

So a Web Experience Management solution is really a composite of several “markets”: 

• WCM solution suite, with usability both for business users and IT personnel (includes behind-the-scenes “content management”, workflow, design tools, and so on)
• Enterprise-quality portal / presentation management
• Recommendations-like technology for social search and personalization
• Web analytics / testing / content monetizing tools
• Rich media and video content management (monetizing components as appropriate)
• Social collaboration / social marketing capabilities
• Extensive integration / interoperability capabilities at several levels of the enterprise infrastructure

 

For buyers in search of WEM software solution vendors, it’s going to take some work to find them in the 2010 MQ. While the 2010 MQ dances around a number of the above capabilities, it never directly addresses WEM solutions, preferring to stick to more of a “classic” (1998?) description of WCM:

Gartner defines WCM as the process of controlling the content to be consumed over one or more online channels through the use of commercial, open-source or hosted management tools based on a core repository. We exclude products such as portals and e-commerce engines even though these technologies have overlapping functions in areas such as personalization, content management and content delivery.

 

 Magic Quadrant for Web Content Management 2010

 
Source: Gartner (August 2010)    subscription or purchase 

 Also available as pdf downloads from CoreMedia and Sitecore, as well as web “display” document on Oracle website

 

 

The Inside-Out Corporation

This particular MQ report for web content management seems to epitomize the work of a corporation more interested in its own goals, and one that is not operating from the customer POV, even though a lot of its revenue is customer-driven. And this particular MQ seems comprised of artificial parameters that only benefit a Gartner agenda. Drawing on my 1998 flashback, this benchmark also seems to be advocating “old school” decision-making processes for tech purchase decisions, focusing on IT rather than business/marketing decision-makers, and on recession scare tactics by primarily advocating big vendors to make the “safe” decision.

In a recession economy, for a company to effect growth, risks have to be taken, and business should be conducted in new ways with new technology paradigms. Companies must make tech purchases based on business goals and needs that contribute to success and competitive edge. Corporate websites and web presence are critical to the success of many businesses: to connect to potential customers wherever they are on the web; to engage buyers - whether B2C or B2B. How a company effectively uses the internet is constantly changing, so corporations need forward-looking solutions – unfortunately we aren’t finding guidance for such solutions in this Gartner MQ.

Evaluations of WEM / WCM solutions are somewhat unique in that they must consider two levels of customers: one is comprised of the buyers of the technology to build websites and manage web presence, and the other is comprised of the target customers that the original tech buyers want to attract/engage with their websites and web presence. Since WEM / WCM solutions impact two levels of buyers, we must look at the technology as a means to an end – it is the “end” that really matters and must be foremost in the minds of solution buyers. Unfortunately this Gartner MQ is not very focused on either the direct buyer of the technology or the customers that the WEM solution buyer hopes to attract.

  

Vendors Offerings Are Part of the Problem

WEM / WCM vendors also own responsibility for the failure of analyst benchmarks to provide clear guidance for buyers. Most vendors adhere to the vague domains of “WCM”, or worse, “CMS”, hedging their bets with offerings that are too horizontal to know if they truly align to the needs of buyers in search of specific WEM capabilities.  WEM is one of few truly segmented solutions in the larger mass of WCM. It’s time for vendors to shake off non-differentiated, broad offerings, to declare real solution segments and target markets (by working with specific industry scenarios and revenue segments). By doing so, vendor solutions will only get better at meeting the needs of specific markets and customers.

I’m frustrated by the continuation of terms like WCM / ECM / CMS – these vague terms just blur a “solution space” that is populated with scores of products from very basic to very complex. Lately there has been a superficial debate that WEM is yet another meaningless vendor buzzword. To the contrary, overly generalized terms like WCM and CMS are the buzzwords that have no real meaning anymore because they include everything and define nothing. WEM is an actual solution with clear purpose and defined capabilities. Whether or not a particular vendor provides an authentic WEM solution is another issue – but to assume none are providing WEM is ridiculous.

 

Back to the Future

Web presence and the various purposes of websites have changed dramatically and will continue to do so. In this MQ, Gartner seems to have overlooked the importance of distributed web presence and new approaches to marketing on the web. New solutions are evolving that are not necessarily based in “classic” WCM.

But what may be the most important factor for a lot of companies is a strong emphasis on the customer-focused web presence for the company. And this may mean that company web presence will show up on other websites, instead of on the corporate website. Additionally a WCM/WEM software platform may only be one of the components of a new management framework for all web presence (management of web content still matters but may not be tied to a specific website anymore).

Content is extremely important to a lot of web marketing plans and strategies, and content is the meat of most social sites, whether it is a conversation thread, a video, a blog post, and so on. So look for WEM solutions themselves to continue to evolve as the means of managing and delivering any kind of content for sites anywhere on the web, through any channel.

Web marketing and customer relationship strategies are changing (and improving) – companies need new solutions and practices to manage the new world. More companies have come to understand that first they must build the web marketing / presence strategy that will accomplish their goals. Then they have to figure out how to achieve the goals of the marketing strategy, which will involve preferred practices and processes, as well as technology.  With web presence evolution, marketing strategies should include orchestration of web presence via other sites, and how to integrate with conversations and content from those external sites.

 

To find significant forward-looking thinking regarding the future of web presence and websites, it may be best to look at the many talented writers and practitioners for website design and WEM solutions technology who understand the evolution taking place right now.  Many writers and practitioners for marketing technology, digital marketing and social media also contribute valuable insight for the future of web presence. Here are a few suggestions to get started:

Web Content, Website design:

A List Apart

Ian Truscott

Paul Boag

Stéphane Croisier

Aral Balkan

Aarron Walter

 

CMS Wire has been featuring many talented writers and recently added a WEM focus (in CMS Wire WEM is “web engagement management” but the capabilities and intent are the same)

 

Interactive Marketing – Social Media:

Jeremiah Owyang and Altimeter Group

Hubspot

Chris Brogan 

David Armano and Edelman Digital       

 

  

Related Articles:

Moving beyond WCM - Web Experience Management software solutions and markets

Goodbye Corporate Website – Hello Web Presence Management Framework?

The Effective Intranet – Engaging the Employee as Customer

B2B WEM / WCM Software Vendors Targeting Mid-Market customers: stay where you are!  

SMB / Mid-Market B2B Software vendors - Findability + web presence + social: attracting the “customer as buyer”

About the author: Julie Hunt is an accomplished software industry analyst, providing strategic market and competitive insights. Her 20+ years as a software professional range from the very technical side to customer-centric work in solutions consulting, sales and marketing.  Julie shares her takes on the software industry via her blog Highly Competitive and on Twitter: @juliebhunt   For more information: Julie Hunt Consulting – Market & Competitive Intelligence Services

Disclaimer: Julie Hunt occasionally contributes articles to CMS Wire.

  

B2B Social CRM for Software Vendors and the Lifecycle of Customer Experience

Using social media for true customer support

 

 

Customer loyalty has become even more essential for software vendor success.  As many software solution markets have become highly commoditized, competitive engagements deteriorate all too often to price wars. In price wars, the customer is always in charge, which is even more the case with the economic downturn.  So tap into the power of the customer-in-charge -- sell to and support them through interactive relationships based on understanding what matters to customers.

 

Social CRM has a very natural fit for B2B software vendors, if companies are open to engendering a “social culture” as part of their go-to-market and company strategies.  Social CRM is proving its value to attract, convert, support, and contribute to the success of customers.  Social CRM (SCRM) also has a natural fit for company strategies that are customer-centric and market-driven – basically empowering software vendors to make a real commitment to address what matters to their target customers and prospects.

 

In return, softare vendors are likely to receive long term customer loyalty, more new prospects, and invaluable information from the customer base regarding the relevance and usability of vendor offerings. A true bidirectional and active relationship with customers results from strong Social CRM programs.

 

What is Social CRM?

SCRM is comprised of two major “pillars”:  an articulated business strategy that aligns with social media in conjunction with CRM processes, and the technology that powers social and CRM applications.  A company builds from the composite of these two pillars to engage customers (and prospects) in collaborative / interactive activities that provide mutually beneficial value and support. At the center of the SCRM strategy and implementation is the customer. Customers are now empowered and enabled to interact with the vendor on inidividual customer terms, using the social tools provided by the vendor (ie: wikis, forums, knowledge base, ratings/reviews, community, and so on). Additionally, integrations with popular social networking applications (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) will robustly extend the SCRM program while tapping into rich communication venues.

 

Social CRM maps to the “lifecycle of the customer experience” during the customer’s tenure with the software vendor.  This lifecycle is dependent on new ways to provide support to customers for current and future needs and success, and involves a continuous process of customer engagement, listening and responding, support and service, all of which are effective only if performed with authenticity and commitment.  In no way is SCRM a “quick and dirty” one-off marketing campaign.  Successful SCRM will require constant attention and care.

 

 

Formulating a Strategy

To create a strong SCRM strategy, explore these basic points relative to your company:

· Who are your target customers, current and desired?

· What really matters to these customers?

· What can my company do to fulfill the desires and needs of my target customers?

· How will my company show responsiveness to my customers?

· What does my company think it will accomplish using social CRM?

· Does my company promote a social or collaborative culture, internally?

 

It is likely that answering these questions thoroughly will also require segmentation analysis for all customer groups in the mix.  The SCRM strategy should acknowledge relevant sub-segments to accommodate the variety of customers, in order to effectively connect with each customer segment. This is especially true for B2B vendors with direct and channel sales models.

 

To really work, SCRM is not “one-size-fits-all”. Understand how your SCRM strategy will help with your CRM objectives and obligations; then figure out which social media you want to use and why. Become a master of your preferred social media by establishing a social culture in your own company (see below).  SCRM requires an authentic personal touch, both for how your customers are communicating with you, and how you respond.  Here are other points to consider when building SCRM strategy and implementations:

· Listening well and Responding thoroughly – interactive conversations with customers; feedback loops to ensure consistency

· Enabling enthusiastic customers to disseminate the power of “word of mouth”

· “Live” support through forums, chat and wikis to help customers help each other and to educate your own company on real problems and needs

· Crowdsourcing with your customers to help to design your products and improve your processes

 

 

 Establishing a Social Culture in Your Own Company is Essential for SCRM Success

To really make SCRM work, software vendors must engender a social culture with all of their own company teams who touch customers and prospects – basically the vast majority of the company.  The commitment, usage and value of SCRM must be real – customers will quickly figure out if the vendor is faking it.  With a healthy social culture in place in your company, the support and growth of SCRM for customer interaction will be a natural and vital part of your overall company strategy.

 

It’s really not that hard to be Social on the personal level, but it does take real planning and decision-making to know how to be social as a company. However, establishing a social culture is somewhat easier now that many in your company and many of your customers already know how to be social, and have real experience with tools like Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn,Twitter, and so on. Be sure to tap into the lessons learned from your employee and customer social experience to finetune your approach for SCRM, to best connect and engage with customers and prospects.

 

 

A Quick Summary of SCRM Technology Options

There are a lot of Social CRM and Social Media offerings available at wide variety of price points. Many options are easy to implement and can be set up as SaaS subcriptions.

 

The main advice here is: first understand your SCRM strategy -- then understand which technologies will best help with the strategy.

 

Social CRM technologies to consider include:

· Social media / Social CRM applications – available as individual applications or as suites/platforms (on premise, SaaS, cloud, open source options)

· Affinity/sentiment monitoring & analytic tools

· Integrations with CRM applications/platforms

· Integrations with popular social media applications (Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, etc.)

· Analytics/metrics for understanding business value and for fine-tuning the SCRM approach

· Robust integration of your company website with your Social CRM applications, and with your go-to-market strategy

 

 

Social CRM Activities Increase the Findability of the Vendor

Using social media for current customer support can bring an additional bonus:  increased “findability” for your company -- for attracting new customers.  Social media content adds greatly to web presence and SEO. It’s now pretty much accepted that the web is the roadway to connect customers and companies, so the value of increased “findability” is obvious. The same forums, wikis, blogs, etc. used to help existing customers can also attract prospects interested in the subjects of the conversations and in how you respond to your existing customers. 

 

 

Related posts:   

Social collaboration in the enterprise: The heart – and goal – of Community is “collaborating people”, not collaboration tools

 

Selling Software Solutions to SMB Markets – Who and How To Target

 

  

About the author: Julie Hunt is an accomplished market intelligence analyst, providing strategic market and competitive insights for the software industry. Her 20+ years as a software professional range from the very technical side  to customer-centric work in solutions consulting, sales and marketing.  Julie shares her takes on the software industry via her blog Highly Competitive and on Twitter: @juliebhunt   For more information: Julie Hunt Consulting – Market Intelligence Services  

 

Custom Code or Data Integration software tools: Strategic Use of Technology for Company Competitiveness

 

 

Data Integration software solutions have been in the spotlight these past few years as the explosion of BI and data-driven businesses processes push through companies of all sorts.  It has become clearer how essential trustworthy and timely data is to business, and how important it is for Business users as well as IT teams to participate in decisions regarding data-driven processes, data access, data integration, and overall data quality. Equally important is the collaboration between IT and Business teams as part of the process to select the right data integration software solutions. Business users of applications, and the underlying data, understand the business context and utilization for that data in different systems, and can help decide advantageous ways to manage access and integration strategies.

 

Until very recently, data integration activities belonged almost exclusively to the IT domain. And for some time, data integration has become much more than moving data between disparate systems. While there are many DI software offerings for many different kinds of projects, IT groups have frequently used custom code instead of purchasing DI tools.

 

When focusing on DI software offerings versus custom code, a deeper, important issue for many enterprises comes forward: the need to align IT and Business teams to work on data initiatives from strategic business perspectives, not just from technology infrastructure perspectives. Many line-of-business (LOB) managers are taking on more responsibility for IT projects, setting goals, outlining requirements, providing insight from the business POV, and providing cost justification for projects. These recent changes add momentum to using technology more strategically -- but must involve IT as the key partner in running business processes. Data integration projects can benefit greatly from this sort of dynamic shared ownership.

 

Strategic collaborations between Business and IT for DI initiatives tie directly to the 80/20 IT spend “paradigm”: companies continue to report a problematic metric where 80% of annual IT spend/resources are dedicated to the maintenance of the status quo, while only 20% has been ponied up to drive tech innovations that would likely benefit the competitiveness of the business. With the fast pace of business change and disruption, agility and efficiency in tech utilization are key to building long term success and sustainability. 

 

Transitioning data integration projects from custom code to implementing more DI software tools that provide the majority of the solution - with much less coding – lends significant momentum to help swing IT resource allocation towards innovation rather than maintenance. The reusability aspects and other value points of DI tools add weight to this shift.

 

IT Culture of Custom Code for DI Projects – Tactical status quo?

In a 2008 interview with Philip Russom, TDWI, Lorraine Lawson for IT Business Edge, Russom indicated that at least 50% of DI projects are still hand coded, even though IT managers understand the clear, and frequently significant, savings that usually result from implementing DI software solutions:

“Whenever he explains his case, people tell him: Wow, I get the economics. Wow, thank you for enlightening me. BUT we still have this culture of hand-coding.”

 

Lorraine Lawson followed with additional posts in 2009 – here summarizing the comments generated by the discussion of custom code for data integration projects:

“Last week, I wrote a post on Why Companies Still Hand Code, But Don't Have To, despite the numerous data-integration tools of all price ranges available on the market. In the piece, I summed up the reasons cited by Rick Sherman, founder of Athena IT Solutions, which included ignorance of market costs, a lack of resources and a misplaced adherence to corporate standards.

“Several readers commented on the post, adding that Sherman overlooked one critical reason why so many data-integration projects are hand coded: The human factor.

“When it comes to data integration, the missing human factor is simply that developers like to code. They're comfortable with the tools and, in that moment, it's easier to hand code than evaluate, choose, buy, install, learn and use a new tool – even if that tool might shave months off projects on down the line.”

 

The seeming preference for custom code does point to a weakness in the differentiation of certain DI software offerings:  these tools are still designed to be used as “developer tools”, and indeed involve an amount (sometimes a lot) of coding themselves. Why would developers adopt a DI solution platform that on the surface looks quite a bit like something else that they are already using? Obviously most DI software tools offer a lot more than a “code platform” -- but to have clear differentiation, DI software vendors need to offer more focused solutions that solve specific business problems for specific customer scenarios.  DI tools need to become faster to learn, easier to use, with ready-to-go components, instead of providing general platforms. For better adoption, DI software offerings should be tools that any team will want to use over and over. 

 

The very important functions of data profiling and data quality are significant components of data integration software solutions that cannot be emulated very well by custom code.  DP and DQ processes help derive more value from data and to help render data more trustworthy and usable. Data profiling tools in particular provide a platform for both Business and IT usage and collaboration. DP and DQ capabilities have become important differentiators for DI software offerings, provided they are cost-effective and lean towards ease-of-use.

 

Vendors: Market DI software offerings to be “more findable”

There are DI software tools aplenty for any sort of company initiative – and any sort of company.  They can be on-premise licensed, SaaS subscription, cloud-based metering, open source.  They may manifest as platforms, appliances, mashups, dashboards, APIs, templates, pre-packaged industry-specific solutions, and so on.

 

Since major analyst publications primarily cover only a select group of high-end DI / ETL tools, the notion that companies and their IT and Business teams are not aware of the many options available has validity. However this is really an opportunity for DI software vendors to do more to make their solutions much more “findable” for their target markets and customers. With the upsurge of interactive marketing and social media for B2B selling, “findability” provides software vendors methods to improve the ability of the right customers to connect with the vendor.

 

Competitive advantage can be gained for vendors who do a better job of marketing and connecting what the tools offer to customer business problems. So it’s not just a matter of being findable as a “brand” or category of DI software, but findable as the right fit for a specific DI / business problem, and for a specific customer segment (a segment that could be Business and/or IT). DI software vendors also own the ability to do a better job of providing good solutions that are ready-to-go, to handle specific industry scenarios. No more one-size fits all type of DI platforms – instead, differentiate from developer code platforms by offering focused tools that solve pre-defined problems, solutions that target specific markets/industries/scenarios.

 

When DI software vendors have done a good job of revealing solutions that matter to their markets while showing that these solutions truly solve important problems, the intrinsic value of those DI software offerings should be a “slap in the face” for targeted Business and IT users. The value should be so apparent that IT will rarely want to hand code DI projects again – at least not the important ones.

 

Clear strategic purpose, distinct solution context, and a customer-centric orientation can take DI software further into helping IT change the usual 80% allocation for the tactical-for-status-quo – on to achieving the goal of a larger chunk of resources dedicated to competitive innovation. For DI projects, connecting IT to Business users of company data empowers everyone to work smarter. Savvy companies want to get more from their IT investments and want to rely on their data assets for competitive advantage. Through collaboration the company benefits: Business users know what they need from data and understand the context for data; IT provides the know-how to implement the DI processes to make it all happen. 

 

 

 

Flipping the 80/20 IT spend paradigm – understanding the TCO of custom code for DI

  

Talend Open Source DI Looks at ROI of Custom Code

Whether you agree with all of the Talend conclusions, this study introduces concrete parameters and data about the real cost of custom-coded DI projects.  One valuable takeaway is that this study shows the need to evaluate custom code on the same basis as any software offerings – and why. I find the Talend data believable, since most IT groups overlook lots of hidden costs related to custom coded projects when conducting comparisons to acquiring DI software tools.  Talend is at least opening the door on points that should be considered when selecting the right DI solution. 

 

Further details can be found in the complete report, The Return on Investment of Open Source Data Integration, 2008.

 

Talend ROI Project Category:  Large project: real-time enterprise data integration

· The "Large" project is a complete (large) enterprise data integration project.

· Twelve different databases, two packaged applications (one ERP and one SCM), an application from a partner (accessed through Web Services), a LDAP directory, and a Software-as-a-service CRM all need to be kept synchronized in real-time.

· This project involves 200 complex data flows.

  

Cost to complete this project using custom code:

 

 

Summary of 3 approaches to completing the “large DI project”

 

 

And finally:

 

 

 

About the author: Julie Hunt is an accomplished market intelligence analyst, providing strategic market and competitive insights for the software industry. Her 20+ years as a software professional range from the very technical side  to customer-centric work in solutions consulting, sales and marketing.  Julie shares her takes on the software industry via her blog Highly Competitive and on Twitter: @juliebhunt   For more information: Julie Hunt Consulting – Market & Competitive Intelligence Services