Highly Competitive - software industry insights

MDM – Speaking the “Language” of Business

 

Part 5 of a six part series on the "New Age of Master Data Management"

 

Data management continues to take on an ever-growing range of activities as the role of data has evolved and expanded for many organizations. Business agility and real-time insight are inherent requirements for many organizations. To meet such requirements organizations need right-time data on a continuous basis, where master data management initiatives are integral to processing business-ready data.

MDM software solutions are evolving as well, to better meet business needs. The new directions of MDM software obviously carry a heavy package of sophisticated technology. Analytics processes now utilize numerous disparate data sources that need context and relationship information that comes from trustworthy and relevant master data. Some MDM solutions are utilizing technologies like graph databases to take advantage of multi-dimensional capabilities to more expansively and agilely handle relationships across all data types. More analytics processes are now providing information and insight primarily for business users who aren't necessarily highly adept at hands-on technology or data management, which opens up new challenges and opportunities for MDM vendors.

The value of these solutions is heavily tied to business needs and objectives. And this value must be clearly and honestly communicated to a growing array of business roles -- in the language of those business users.

In the 'New Age of MDM', with greater business participation, should IT and data management team members utilize more of the language of less technical business roles when in discussions related to MDM purchases, implementations and usages?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The "Languages" of MDM

Often conversations regarding master data management have been among IT and data management professionals, including more tech-savvy business roles involved in data management. The "language" of MDM started off primarily related to the worlds of IT and data management teams – in other words "techy talk".

But it's likely that this original "language" of MDM is now insufficient for meeting current business objectives and requirements, with the increased (and necessary) involvement of business roles, and the importance of selling the value of MDM to business managers and non-IT decision-makers. A growing lineup of business roles are increasingly involved in data governance discussions regarding practices, policies, cultural changes, and processes, as well as how to develop cross-functional teams and remediate silos for systems and data. Discussions with business roles also focus on the many ways that MDM can underpin important business initiatives and desired outcomes for objectives.

Conversations about the purchase of MDM software solutions can involve less technical roles. High level managers and C-level roles may be part of the decision-making processes: deciding if master data management itself should be adopted; understanding how MDM supports business requirements and goals; choosing which MDM software technologies to utilize; determining metrics and assessing outcomes related to MDM initiatives. Obviously these conversations also involve IT and data management teams, who now must be prepared to communicate well with different business roles.

 

Communicating in Customer Business Language

Those of us who work with software vendors (no matter which "side") are clearly aware that marketing and sales efforts for software solutions can deviate linguistically from technical terminology when communicating with less technical business users. But with the recent evolutionary changes for MDM software offerings, there is an increasing need for software vendors and practitioners of MDM to speak the language of the business.

When marketing and selling their MDM software to business roles, some vendors are dropping the use of the term "master data management" in order to bypass the "negative baggage" of traditional MDM solutions. Software vendors with new approaches to MDM are utilizing 'new language' to better describe what these new approaches really do, and how they better align the value with Business. Beyond simply being marketing efforts, most changes in 'language' are fairly honest attempts to more clearly connect MDM practices and solutions to real business needs, desired outcomes and advantage – in terminology that conveys realistic meaning to business users and decision-makers.

Business roles involved in buying decisions may not know what MDM is, can get confused or lost in the terminology and technology, can see it as too complicated – all of which can interfere with the prospective customer's understanding of why MDM is important for making competitive use of data. It's legitimate for vendors to focus on the high level of what MDM contributes to improve data and business processes, and what the business benefits are for each organization. Focus should also cover how the MDM solution handles business needs relative to existing organizational infrastructure, along with business practices and processes – and ultimately business objectives and desired outcomes.

If MDM software vendors demonstrate clearly how the technologies connect to achieving business objectives and outcomes, it better enlightens prospective customers on the benefits and essential nature of master data management – both in terms of the MDM practice and the supporting technologies. And very importantly, business language is essential to uncover business problems to be solved and how data management fits into overall business strategies.

Obviously there is a danger of over-simplification. MDM implementations can take time, both for setting up the technologies, and to institute cultural changes, data governance practices and new cross-functional processes. These aspects of MDM practices and solutions must be honestly communicated. Fortunately we are seeing great advances by different vendors to more quickly get MDM implementations up-and-running, and to take new approaches to how MDM programs are run in order to more clearly show the benefits of MDM and to produce them in a timely manner.

 

How MDM Software Vendors Speak the Language of Business

Often the "buyers" of enterprise software consist of multiple roles in an organization. No longer is software purchasing solely the domain of IT or other technical teams. There is frequently a composite "buyer" that draws on both influencers and decision-makers. Obviously technical teams perform a very important role in the purchase of software, more often as influencers rather than the final decision-makers. Business roles involved in enterprise software purchases can include: mid-level managers and business unit managers whose teams will be impacted by the use of the software; VPs who approve purchases; CEOs and CFOs who influence or dictate purchase decisions; and even staff in accounts payable who enact purchase transactions.

There are numerous software vendors with various flavors of MDM solutions who are leaning further into the language of business to conduct marketing and sales activities, and discussions about implementations and usage. Here are a couple of examples:

Enabling Content Management and Digital Interactions

Data and analytics have become essential components of the marketing efforts of most organizations. As a natural evolution, certain marketing technologies have embedded master data management capabilities to provide a more seamless application for business users. Some vendors of such marketing technologies don't call out MDM per se as a component of the solution.

A company that started as a traditional PIM vendor evolved its software into a solution for managing complex product information and multichannel content, for multiple roles in the information supply chain. For the user, the MDM / PIM part is "invisible". Prospective customers see this solution as an application that supports multichannel interactions, sophisticated content management and digital communications / marketing. The vendor places a strong emphasis on business user access to solution capabilities which further encompasses the business user perspective and language.

The solution provides a means to help resolve the "information fragmentation" that plagues organizational efforts to address the complexities of content management and usage, including highly variable sources (user-generated content, outside experts, brand) and diverse distribution channels (corporate website, mobile, social). The solution supports efforts to reconcile brand consistency and customer experience requirements that are necessary for successful digital marketing.

These are all very much business problems that are being addressed by business teams: digital marketing, ecommerce, content management, product strategy, and so on. The vendor reveals the value of the solution in the language of both business buyers and users. In marketing the solution, the software vendor focus isn't on data / information per se, but on what business users need to do with information and content, and how solution capabilities help them manage these activities in support of digital business needs.

 

Breaking Free from Traditional MDM through Data-Driven Business Applications

A vendor has introduced a relatively new "master data management" platform that is designed to break away from the traditional aspects of MDM software solutions. Instead of basing MDM and other data-related capabilities on relational databases, which has been a common choice until recently, this vendor loads combined and curated data into a NoSQL graph database. This allows the vendor to provide a scalable multi-tenant platform-as-a-service to innovate the creation of 'data applications' that are frequently closely tied to business functions and initiatives.  

On the technical side, this approach supports oversized datasets and accommodates rapidly evolving schema, something most relational databases find difficult. Graph databases provide a greatly improved method to delineate relationships between people, data, and things.  

For business users, this data management solution provides the means to build data-driven business applications that align with the goals and functions of the business. Business users can construct applications that are industry-specific to perform exactly the processes that are needed.

Business users don't need to know that the platform is based on an MDM infrastructure. This vendor wants to give business users the equivalent of "consumer apps" that produce information and analytics results quickly and easily. The vendor frequently speaks "business language" to help business users grasp these concepts.

For business users to successfully take advantage of this platform, the software capabilities and processes will have to be couched in the language of the business. The platform will have to carefully manage business user access based on guidelines and activities that make sense to less-technical business roles. As with any data management software solution that strives to support usage by business roles, IT and data management teams must be partners with the business to ensure successful outcomes. Collaborative capabilities enable such partnerships. So it will be interesting to see how successfully this vendor empowers and protects business usage of its MDM-based platform.

 

Going Beyond the "Traditional Language" of MDM

In the 'New Age of MDM', we are seeing great diversity as to how vendors, practitioners and organizations talk about MDM. Changes in language are essential to better connect MDM practices and solutions to real business needs, desired outcomes and value – in terminology that conveys real meaning to business management and decision-makers.

We'll continue to see a broadening variety of solutions that build on MDM, while deviating from traditional MDM implementations, in order to offer more business-relevant capabilities. Realistically, even the term "master data management" can be confusing for business roles in many organizations that could benefit from implementing MDM practices and technologies. It can be advantageous and helpful when vendors use new but honest terminology to better demonstrate business value and help prospective customers understand the 'why' and 'how' of implementing master data management initiatives.

It seems that the more innovative the MDM-related software solution, the greater the need for new ways to work directly with business roles and to communicate in the language of business. One of the stumbling blocks for such innovation of software and language comes from analyst firms that cover MDM software solutions. Increasingly certain analyst firms have become trapped by their inexact definitions of what kind of solution constitutes an "MDM offering", when evaluating MDM vendors for benchmark reports. Many vendors with MDM-related offerings are trailblazing new directions for MDM, but are excluded from certain industry benchmarks because of the narrow definition held by these firms. Analyst firms following such a path are performing a disservice to buyers who are interested in the right approach to MDM for their organizations, or who are in need of an MDM-based offering that provides business applications tailored for immediate needs.

 

Image source: hastac.org

 

About the author: Julie is an independent consultant and industry analyst for B2B software solutions, providing services to vendors to improve strategies for customers and target markets, products and solutions, and future direction. Julie has expertise in several solution spaces including: data integration and data quality; analytics and BI; business process, workflow and collaboration; digital marketing, WCM and social media; and the pivotal importance of user and customer experiences. Julie shares her takes on the software industry via her blog Highly Competitive and on Twitter: @juliebhunt For more information: Julie Hunt Consulting – Strategies for B2B Software Solutions: Working from the Customer Perspective

 

Business Transformation Demands Modern Data Integration

   

Part 1 of a multi-part series on the essential interwoven nature of Business and Modern Data Integration

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Business and Data Transformations

Forward-moving businesses and their data needs comprise a whole new world that is constantly changing. This new data-smart world is built on expanded approaches to data integration that have become known collectively as Modern Data Integration. If businesses want the right kind of data to underpin advanced analytics processes or to create multi-dimensional views of customers, data integration must be pursued as a strategic function that aligns with business objectives.

Most organizations have entered the digital realm, where various aspects of business increasingly incorporate cloud, social and mobile as important platforms. As the usage of these platforms grows, we see more changes in both business and customer behavior. To perform well in the digital realm requires an elastic organization.

Elasticity, both as business and technology infrastructure paradigms, enables organizations to tap into dynamic business models, decision-making processes, and technology mechanisms to strengthen responsiveness to any situation. To empower enterprise elasticity, organizations have to commit to continually improving data gathering methods, analytics approaches, business processes, and bi-directional connections between the people of the organization.

 

Modern Business Means Modern Data Integration

Vital data needed by organizations frequently is found not only outside the enterprise data warehouse, but outside the enterprise. Businesses are pressed to recognize the value that can come from integrating data from a variety of sources. Data management and data integration solutions have been strongly challenged to handle continuous changes in data and how it's used, increasingly in real-time.

Modern data integration builds on technologies and processes that long have been part of the bigger world of data integration, beyond basic ETL functions. Practices like data quality, data profiling and data governance (also highly relevant to business users) comprise important capabilities that are central to reliable up-to-date data, no matter the source or structure.

Modern data integration offerings encompass interoperating multi-platform solutions (iPaaS and on-premises), as well as pure-play cloud and SaaS solutions, where the lines continue to blur between application and data integration. Today modern data integration stands as a critical endeavor that must be agile and business-responsive, directly underlying many initiatives that can make or break organizational success: analytics and decision-making; real-time processes to engender improved customer experiences; omnichannel and digital marketing; intelligent business automation; alignment with digital transformation -- and so on.

Newer technologies like graph databases and data virtualization have contributed to the metamorphosis of traditional data integration into modern data integration, as have concepts like 'good-enough' data quality and data mash-ups. Part of the metamorphosis is to provide access to business users, to give them more hands-on power for data usage and analytics. The metamorphosis also reflects needs such as real-time situational awareness analytics, frequently run as continuous processes. With these changes, modern data integration also takes on the burden of ensuring that business users are protected from the inherent pitfalls of concepts like 'good enough' data quality and data mash-ups.

 

The Seeds of Modern Data Integration

For data integration solutions, the reality of modern data integration has been a work-in-progress for several years. Some solutions began with integrations designed specifically for cloud to cloud data flows, and then expanded to include cloud to on-premises. Then there's the Salesforce ecosystem of third-party vendors that has been a strong driver for developing cloud to on-premises (and back) integration flows, and a distinct incubator of Data Integration as a Service.

As cloud services proliferated, established integration solutions were augmented to work with cloud data flows, and thereby expanding their data integration capabilities into "new" territory. Traditional data integration vendors are adding cloud-based solutions. Some solutions have come into the modern data integration arena from the world of ETL and EDW; some from the application integration spaces of ESB / SOA / EAI. Modern data integration also has origins in the multi-structured worlds of B2B data exchanges and business messaging systems.

Master data management has a part in the evolution of modern data integration. MDM has a growing role in many areas that matter to organizations: strong brand presence, multichannel customer interactions, right-fit content and information, and highly variable buying journeys. Master data is critical to providing context to big data sources, to connect big data fragments to customers and transactions. A quick survey of new entrants for MDM solutions shows a conscious recognition that data management has to parallel how the business works and recognize highly variable data sources that are needed for full-bodied master data.

 

What Matters Most: The Buyer Perspective

Modern data integration is a whole new world, in a clean slate sort of way, because it must serve a business world that is constantly changing. This is what should matter to the buyers of data integration solutions. Modern data integration solutions are meant to handle numerous business use cases with ease, while providing value to IT and business roles.

In the past, vendors of data integration solutions solely targeted IT as their buyers, principally because many data integration solutions were very "hands on", more like developer tools. Modern data integration includes a significant change: more opportunities for business users of various levels of technical proficiency to directly use - and even create - data integration processes. For IT roles, modern data integration offers more streamlined, pre-built and reusable components, to speed up the creation of more complex integrations.

For modern data integration solutions, all buyer perspectives matter, whether related to business or technical roles. In reality, for most technology purchases (especially in larger organizations), there is often a "composite" buyer made up of IT and business roles. A tech-savvy buyer will already know the history of data integration and a lot about the "new world" of modern data integration. A more business-oriented buyer doesn't care where modern data integration came from, but needs to know that the solution will support business initiatives that map to desired business outcomes.

The essential perspective is that both buyers simply want to know if the modern data integration solution is going to take care of what they need to do now, often in terms of business-related projects and objectives.

 

Image Source: planview.com

 

About the author: Julie is an independent consultant and industry analyst for B2B software solutions, providing services to vendors to improve strategies for customers and target markets, products and solutions, and future direction. Julie has expertise in several solution spaces including: data integration and data quality; analytics and BI; business process, workflow and collaboration; digital marketing, WCM and social media; and the pivotal importance of user and customer experiences. Julie shares her takes on the software industry via her blog Highly Competitive and on Twitter: @juliebhunt For more information: Julie Hunt Consulting – Strategies for B2B Software Solutions: Working from the Customer Perspective

 

Knocking Down Silos: Connecting Technology to Business

 

"Knocking down silos" to ensure the critical role of data strategies and solutions -- from the perspectives of business needs, buyers and users, and software vendors.

 

 

A Passion for Software Technology

I have two great passions when it comes to software technology. My tech career and first source of passion for software began many years ago as a developer in the IT group of Texas Instruments, working on systems that supported the semiconductor division. From the very beginning, end users (or customers) were always in the back of my mind, both for the work I did in software development and for the system user guides that I wrote.

When I did analysis for a new software project, my frame of reference included: is this something that the people who do the work really need? Does it help them in the ways that they want to be helped? Will this improve the overall quality and productivity of work done? And, unlike many at the time, my user manuals were created from the user perspective, in a flow that followed how they would use the application for actual work. It seemed natural to me to connect technology to real business needs, and to people. Still does.

Unfortunately to this day, software vendors and in-house developers often put too much focus on technologies and features, and fail to connect with the right potential customers or users to create solutions that help customers solve their business problems. Software vendors and buyers alike need strategies and expert guidance to optimize today's integrated enterprises: how different software applications fit together, how to evolve practices and processes for users to best take advantage of new technologies – even cultural changes for the internal enterprise.

 

An Equal Passion for Data Applications

My second long-time passion comes from working with a data management software vendor for several years. Obviously data impacts most companies and their systems; functions like data integration and data quality matter a lot for successful outcomes. I'm concerned that many businesses and IT teams still come up short on understanding the importance of connecting data management processes to business needs.

I've worked with other software vendors with offerings for web content management, marketing automation and eLearning, to name a few. These solutions almost always include an increasing number of data-oriented capabilities, including analytics, and metrics.

Data runs through an entire organization and beyond -- connecting employees, customers, partners, systems, processes, actions, and outcomes. Unfortunately silos of all sorts also run through organizations, with horrific consequences for important business initiatives. For business software to work well, it's rarely only about the technology.

 

A Data Story for Digital Marketing: Silos and Integration

Successful digital marketing initiatives with an authentic customer focus are only possible with the substantial aid of sophisticated technologies. But the right technology isn't enough. All sorts of silos and stumbling blocks can plague marketers working with digital marketing. These hurdles mirror company-wide challenges to becoming customer-focused, business-agile and market-savvy. Integrated data management and analytics are crucial but so is the integration of many kinds of silos.

• Silos of information and content, business processes, and corporate functions continue to debilitate many organizations. Digital marketing will not happen if Marketing is a silo. The essentials of digital marketing are cross-team collaboration, bi-directional sharing of data and analytics results, cross-functional customer focus and support, relevant quality content. All of these pieces are needed to continuously update a strong understanding of customers and their journeys – across the organization.  
• Data and analytics are mission critical to everything in digital marketing, for successful outcomes. Data from many sources, inside and outside the firewall, is requisite to create and continuously update a multi-dimensional customer view – as well as analytics for buying trends, future customer behavior, understanding which products and which target markets, and better tracking of different customer journeys.

Data analytics initiatives are no small undertaking, especially since many of the sources and analytics processes don't originate in the Marketing 'silo'. As part of the effort to integrate silos, centralizing analytics can eliminate redundant effort to pull together intelligence to benefit all functions in the company. Centralized customer-focused analytics also contribute greatly to nurturing relevant customer experiences across channels by sharing the right insight with all customer-related functions in the business.

• It's very tempting to focus too much on technology and tactics. While technology is essential to make a lot of digital marketing happen, many marketers find themselves too enamored of the tools, thinking that's all it takes. Outcomes: no strategies, no customer focus, the wrong goals, and the wrong metrics. Often the mechanics of working with the technology pull marketers away from the actual customer experience and how to improve it – which are pivotal elements of digital marketing.

    

The Biggest Silo of Them All

If top management doesn't yet understand who their customers are and why they do or don't buy from the company, then it's crazy to expect marketing to conjure miracles and save the business. Company leaders must build corporate strategies that revolve around customers, delivering what they need and want – and they must pursue marketing as a strategic function. For most businesses, customers drive the sales process -- meaning that an organization will only succeed when marketing is empowered to provide the highly personalized and relevant interactions that help customers want to buy products.

 

Image Source: netsrv-consulting.com

 

About the author: Julie is an independent consultant and industry analyst for B2B software solutions, providing services to vendors to improve strategies for customers and target markets, products and solutions, and future direction. Julie has expertise in several solution spaces including: data integration and data quality; analytics and BI; business process, workflow and collaboration; digital marketing, WCM and social media; and the pivotal importance of user and customer experiences. Julie shares her takes on the software industry via her blog Highly Competitive and on Twitter: @juliebhunt For more information: Julie Hunt Consulting – Strategies for B2B Software Solutions: Working from the Customer Perspective

 

 

 

Industry-Focused Services Deliver Unique Value

 

I often advise my clients (B2B software vendors and professional services firms) to seriously consider well-targeted markets that require extensive expertise that will set the vendor apart. These markets might be a specific industry focus or niche services for distinct industry or business problems. Such specialized offerings provide an important way that vendors can competitively differentiate on real performance that benefits their clients. MSPs are no different in this respect, particularly as traditional IT managed services have become highly commoditized, with an overflowing field of competitors.

 

Distinctive Expertise Means Big Value for Clients and for MSPs

To provide niche or industry-specific services means developing in-depth expertise for that particular service offering, both in terms of the industry or niche and the problems that need to be solved. The MSP becomes highly proficient in understanding the details of a specific industry need - on all fronts: business; technology; processes; practices; external requirements such as compliance; and how the new services will impact client imperatives.

Hands-on expertise is essential. The MSP becomes the "go-to-guy" for certain industries or business specialties because of proven knowledge and ability. This expertise serves to market the MSP naturally through real demonstrations of subject matter mastery and problem-solving. It will require that the MSP directly participate in the world of the specialty, including attending events, user group meetings, training opportunities, and so on. Such events provide excellent access to potential clients, as well as organic marketing through articles, blog posts and news releases written about the events by other parties.

When MSPs specialize, they're able to walk in the shoes of their clients, to better understand what they are facing, and to visualize new ways to help them solve problems. The MSP now walks the walk, as well as talks the talk. Being able to speak the same language as customers and users engenders trust and opens clearer lines of communication. Hands-on expertise in specialized areas allows the MSP to know what matters to their clients and what solutions will make a difference. And their clients will quickly see that the MSP is for real.

Knowing specific industries or niche markets makes it easier to assess the needs of each customer, and to determine the best solutions. The MSP builds a knowledge bank of problems, pitfalls and best practices related to solutions for focused markets. As a result, reusability becomes a competitive advantage for the MSP, from assessing client needs and constructing bids, to basing applications and solutions on proven solution templates. MSPs become thoroughly in the know for the top industry preferences for specific software solutions and the corresponding software ecosystem.

All of this leads to opportunities for unique services that few other MSPs are able to provide.

 

Technology Services Focus for Retail Fashion Industry

New York City-based service provider eMazzanti Technologies has been actively targeting the retail fashion industry with services to improve transactional technologies, such as mobile POS systems, and services for comprehensive cyber security. eMazzanti provides extensive security services for customer and business data protection, including network security solutions and appliances, supplemented by eMazzanti monitoring and remediation services.

To deepen industry expertise, eMazzanti staff now includes experienced retail fashion professionals. eMazzanti sees greater opportunity in serving broad needs across a retail fashion business, beyond the traditional IT services of the past:

Looking to enhance clients' retail revenue growth, the company is continually assessing emerging technologies such as digital mirrors, interactive product displays and customer recognition systems for retail customers. Existing and future technologies depend on reliable and secure network design and deployment, eMazzanti's core strength.

 

Selling Value over Price

Traveling the path of niche and industry services helps smart MSPs escape endless pricing "wars" for commoditized services provided by innumerable MSPs. Value is immediately obvious to clients when focused services are available for unique needs within an industry or niche market.

All clients want top notch technology services providers, and many are on the lookout for services that have a tight fit for their specific industry or niche. Tailored services offer such clients competitive advantage for attaining business objectives. Clients know their businesses can see healthy growth when partnered with MSP firms committed to deep expertise for their clients' specific industry needs.

 

 

Image source: dev2ops.org

 

This post was brought to you by IBM for MSPs and opinions are my own. To read more on this topic, visit IBM's PivotPoint. Dedicated to providing valuable insight from industry thought leaders, PivotPoint offers expertise to help you develop, differentiate and scale your business.

 

About the author: Julie Hunt understands the overlap and convergence of many business processes and software solutions that once were thought of as "separate" – and how this impacts software Vendors and Buyers, as well as the strategies that enterprises implement for how technology supports the business and its customers. Julie shares her takes on the software industry via her blog Highly Competitiveand on Twitter: @juliebhunt For more information: Julie Hunt Consulting

 

 

Managed Services -- Building Real Customer Experiences and Relationships

 

Just like any other business, Managed Services Providers have an important path to follow, to distinctly set their services apart from other MSPs. This path pivots on the commitment to ensuring continuously improved customer and user experiences. High quality experiences for clients comprise a great differentiator in the ever-growing world of new managed services firms and cloud solution vendors. Many services can quickly become commoditized, and too often MSPs resort to "differentiating" on price, a dangerous path that can lead to failure.

As customer and user expectations rise, putting strong focus on their experiences with the MSP organization and its services is a must-have. Customer and user experiences are made up of all interactions across all channels during the entire lifecycle of the client company as an MSP customer, which introduces numerous opportunities to better engage and serve clients.

 

Experiences across the Customer Organization

There are often multiple roles in a single organization that make up the 'customers' and 'users' for technology services. This means very different experiences take place from role to role.

The customer experience frequently aligns with the buyer journey, and post-sale account management for a particular client company. The customer-as-buyer often is a composite of roles: mid-level managers who choose services and technology, VPs who approve purchases, CEOs and CFOs who influence or dictate purchase decisions, and even accounting staff who enact purchase transactions. Defining and engendering excellent experiences for a customer or buyer journey comprised of all of these roles usually requires a lot of work. But this is work that should be done for MSPs to better understand their "customers".

The user experience is much more than utilizing technology services – it's all the interactions that occur during the life cycle of services for a particular set of end users and customers. The term user journey may be the best for describing the ongoing relationship between users and MSPs and the services they provide, including customer support.

Within client organizations, communication disconnects often occur between the customer-as-buyer and end users that can jeopardize the customer relationships that MSPs need to build.

 

Customer Relationships Suffer when Communication Breaks Down

Customer Centricity has taken a look at the communication gaps that can adversely affect customer experiences. The quadrant diagram below spans both the client and MSP organizations to depict how collaboration and communication can fall apart due to disconnects between MSP roles and client roles. Enhanced awareness of these roles should help MSPs consciously improve communications and processes between their organizational roles and client roles, ultimately to ensure positive long-term relationships.

 

            Customer Centricity - Communication Disconnects

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Image & explanation: Customer Centricity

 

Quadrant 1: The (customer) business manager doesn't truly understand the value that is being delivered by the MSP. They only hear reference to the MSP when there is a service problem. When it comes time to reduce expenses, they are hard pressed to justify the line item representing the cost of the MSP.

Quadrant 2: The (MSP) Sales Representative has little to no insight into how the (client) company is "truly" leveraging the product, the benefits that are being realized, the issues being experienced by those using the product and the value being delivered by the "service organization."

Quadrant 3: The customer's end-users and technical contacts play a key role in the effective use and performance of the MSP's service. They are also key in shaping the business manager's perception of the MSP. However, the only time that they discuss the MSP is when there is a problem. They don't discuss all the great things that the MSP has done on a day-in / day-out basis.

Quadrant 4: (MSP) Customer Service / Technical Support typically observe that "all things are well with the customer." This impression, which can often be false, is created because the customer's end-users maintain a courteous working relationship with the MSP's service personnel, to make sure that they can continue to "get things done" when they really need to.

Problems Impact All Quadrants: When a significant business disrupting problem occurs (which it WILL), the customer's end-user remains calm, cool and collected when speaking with the MSP's service team. The service team doesn't find it necessary to escalate awareness of the "incident" to the MSP's Sales Representative or Senior Management because they don't understand the level of impact

 

Building Real Customer Relationships

Many of the "business-as-usual" activities for MSPs are rich opportunities to enhance customer experiences and build long-term relationships. Important areas that make a difference are already in play: basics like consistently meeting or exceeding SLAs, delivering on all promises, usability and ease-of-use, high performance, and so on. This is how trust is built for real relationships.

MSPs can make sure that new client relationships are built on great customer experiences by starting with onboarding processes and/or service activation. MSPs should allocate strong resources that will make these introductory functions engaging, effective and worthwhile. Obviously when done well, a positive tone has been set for ongoing business.

While MSP ecosystems of complementary service providers are extremely beneficial, in most cases one major function should remain under the control of each individual MSP organization: help desk and customer support. Customer support interactions are critical for growing customer relationships and to expand knowledge about different kinds of customers. It's also an opportunity to thoroughly document customer environments and conversations about business needs, to help these customers better utilize all MSP services now and in the future.

The information and data gained from all interactions with customers and users become the fuel for customer-focused analytics that help MSPs learn more about current and potential customers and the sorts of services that they want and need. Such detailed customer intelligence is an invaluable competitive edge.

 

But Who Owns the Customer Experience?

As illustrated by the Customer Centricity communication quadrant, MSPs would be smart to facilitate better communication with – and within – their client companies, to make sure the value of their services is obvious to the relevant customer and user roles.

MSPs must work to improve their own internal collaborations across functions to engender continuous high quality customer and user experiences. MSPs also need to implement ongoing analytics processes to generate and share customer insights across the organization.

Within the MSP organization, the responsibility for nurturing and shepherding ongoing customer experiences belongs to all teams that impact customers. At the core, much of the work should be accomplished by strong, continuously evolving collaborations between functional teams. To keep an agile customer focus, MSPs cannot afford to allow functional silos to exist within their organizations.

In the end, only the customer can own the customer experience – but MSPs have a great deal of power to enhance all customer interactions and the quality of services provided to clients.

 

Customer Image source: hudsonvalleynewsnetwork.com

 

 

This post was brought to you by IBM for Midsize Business and opinions are my own. To read more on this topic visit IBM's Midsize Insider. Dedicated to providing businesses with expertise, solutions and tools that are specific to small and midsized companies, the Midsize Business program provides businesses with the materials and knowledge they need to become engines of a smarter planet.

 

About the author: Julie Hunt understands the overlap and convergence of many business processes and software solutions that once were thought of as "separate" – and how this impacts software Vendors and Buyers, as well as the strategies that enterprises implement for how technology supports the business and its customers. Julie shares her takes on the software industry via her blog Highly Competitiveand on Twitter: @juliebhunt For more information: Julie Hunt Consulting – Strategies for B2B Software Solutions: Working from the Customer Perspective

 

MSPs -- Picking the Right Technology Partners

 

 

Managed Service Providers (MSPs) can find sustained success by building out a strong and highly complementary partner ecosystem. In the technology industry, the term 'ecosystem' is tossed around quite a bit. But for MSPs the right ecosystem makes all the difference for organic growth, flexible offerings and continuously meeting a wider variety of customer needs. MSPs have long been a growth segment for technology partner channels. Now MSPs should turn to fellow service providers as significant candidates for partnerships in their own ecosystems.

 

So how can you find the right technology partners and then leverage those partnerships for greater competitive advantage? It involves a good deal of analysis that explores your business strategy, what your customers need, and what third party services can bring to your game. How do you want to structure your own partner ecosystem, how does it affect your go-to-market strategies, how does it benefit your business, and how does this help you better serve your customers?

 

Other crucial questions to explore with potential partners:

    How does the partner offering add value and innovation to your services?

You need to ask this question to establish the breadth of the combined services. Then assess the impact of the "new" platform of services on your customers' business needs and goals. Another area to explore: does the combined platform add competitive differentiation from other MSPs? Revisit frequently what your partners visualize for future direction and new services that may provide further competitive advantage. If a partner seems to be stagnating, it may be time to search for someone new.    

 

What's the plan for collaborative Marketing and Sales?

If support for Marketing and Sales are in the mix, make sure that the prospective partner will deliver what you need. Explore in detail what the partner intends to do, what sort of timeline, examples from other partner experiences, and how strong the results were for generating new business. What sort of reporting and metrics will the partner provide to show activity and outcomes? What kind of resources does the partner have in place to provide strong support in this area?

 

What's the dollar and cents bottom line?

Take care not to solely focus on technology conversations. The financial side of any partnership is just as important. Fully discuss financial models to make sure that you pick one that integrates with your business model and goals. Make sure the financial arrangements provide the profitability you expect.

 

How does the partner view the customer / end user experience?

If you are strongly focused on a customer-centric business strategy (and you should be), find out if your potential partners share your passion for high quality customer and end user experiences. If a partner does not put a high priority on customer success with the overall services platform, you could be endangering your business.

 

    What kind of specialized technical support will you receive?

Once you have integrated the partner offering into your overall platform, you need to know that you will have dedicated support resources to quickly take care of your issues and those of your customers.

 

Partner ecosystems open up a lot of new business opportunities for MSPs – when they are based on the right strategies. As technologies and markets change, MSPs are shifting from traditional approaches to offer more innovative and timely services. But in building out a partner ecosystem, you must be alert to protecting your reputation as a trustworthy and reliable service provider. Your collaborations with other MSPs must add to your reputation, not jeopardize it.

 

 

Image source: Personal Touch

 

This post was brought to you by IBM for Midsize Business and opinions are my own. To read more on this topic, visit  IBM's Midsize Insider. Dedicated to providing businesses with expertise, solutions and tools that are specific to small and midsized companies, the Midsize Business program provides businesses with the materials and knowledge they need to become engines of a smarter planet.

 

About the author: Julie Hunt understands the overlap and convergence of many business processes and software solutions that once were thought of as "separate" – and how this impacts software Vendors and Buyers, as well as the strategies that enterprises implement for how technology supports the business and its customers. Julie shares her takes on the software industry via her blog Highly Competitiveand on Twitter: @juliebhunt For more information: Julie Hunt Consulting – Strategies for B2B Software Solutions: Working from the Customer Perspective

‘Tech Savvy’ for Midsized Companies Means ‘Customer Savvy’

 

Technology is no longer simply back office automation or work productivity tools addressing the day to day of the business. Technology has become a core pillar for company strategies, as well as for change and success. The biggest transformation any midsized company can make to become a business that sustains growth over time is to strategically and proactively use technology to achieve the goals of the business. Such a transformation through technology often takes midsized companies into new markets and new ways of doing business. The strategic positioning of technology leads to strengthening the organization, improving competitive edge and opening new doors for growth and opportunity.

In parallel to technology considerations, the single most important success factor for most companies is The Customer. These days all activities related to the customer must be ramped up and more responsive to customer needs and desires. Companies must change how they function to better serve customers. Proactive use of technology in many areas is essential to ensure top notch customer experiences and interactions at any time and place.

Midsized companies that make the customer a core focus will achieve better outcomes. When deciding on how to best leverage technology, companies should use customer strategies to drive and define technology strategies. When companies combine technologies with effective practices and processes around meeting customer needs on every level, competitive edge and revenue growth usually follow as natural outcomes.

The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) completed a global study focused on midsized and smaller companies to assess the impact of technology on business performance and growth:

Adopting technology in an intelligent way is critical to the future business success of many SMEs. More than 90 percent of leaders said that IT is important to their business's future, and almost two-thirds said that new technologies will lead to higher revenues and profits or more jobs at their company.

The study presents clear evidence that midsized and smaller businesses with higher rates of technology adoption grow faster and create more jobs than their counterparts that maintain low levels of technology adoption. Looking at U.S. SMB companies, BCG projected that if 15 percent of technology 'laggards' and 30 percent of technology 'followers' evolved into high technology adoption companies, the result would be the addition of more than two million jobs and an additional $360 billion flowing into the U.S. economy.

 

Midsized companies that want to be top competitors should evaluate all functional and operational areas that help the company shine as a customer-responsive organization to see how improvements can be made with the right technologies:

• Marketing and business interactions through mobile devices and digital channels
• Customer service and support
• eCommerce and payment services
• Gaining insight from data analytics for everything Customer
• CRM and Marketing Automation platforms
• Customer onboarding and education channels
• Deployment of Cloud / SaaS solutions for enterprise capabilities that keep up with customer and market trends

 

The goal should always be to wow customers. There are many robust technologies that can help midsized companies do that every day, in every interaction and channel. Companies that are "tech savvy" quickly show how they are "customer savvy".

 

Image Source: Sabre Travel Network

 

This post was brought to you by IBM for Midsize Business and opinions are my own. To read more on this topic, visit  IBM's Midsize Insider. Dedicated to providing businesses with expertise, solutions and tools that are specific to small and midsized companies, the Midsize Business program provides businesses with the materials and knowledge they need to become engines of a smarter planet.

 

About the author: Julie Hunt understands the overlap and convergence of many business processes and software solutions that once were thought of as "separate" – and how this impacts software Vendors and Buyers, as well as the strategies that enterprises implement for how technology supports the business and its customers. Julie shares her takes on the software industry via her blog Highly Competitiveand on Twitter: @juliebhunt For more information: Julie Hunt Consulting – Strategies for B2B Software Solutions: Working from the Customer Perspective

Customer Journeys Trump the Traditional Sales Cycle

                                Originally published on CMSWire

 

While pointless debate continues in organizations as to who "owns" the customer experience (the customer of course!), the responsibility for nurturing and shepherding the continuous customer experience belongs to all teams that impact customers. At the core, much of the work should be accomplished by strong, continuously evolving collaborations between marketing and sales. Unfortunately in many companies there are still ridiculous and harmful walls between sales and marketing – and a lot of political nonsense, mainly tied to the 'blame game' when forecasts aren't met and deals aren't closed.

In reality marketing and sales have intertwined roles for engendering positive outcomes from customer journeys, whether they realize it or not. But all too often the efforts of these roles are disjointed. Both groups should work together to serve customers in every sense. Sales and marketing teams already have highly complementary activities when it comes to customers – the effectiveness of these activities is amplified when these two teams deliberately work together.

To connect authentically to what customers need and want, customer journeys trump the traditional sales cycle. The sales cycle has been an inside-out process, tied primarily to sales goals and operations. The customer lifecycle with a company comprises an ongoing journey before, during and after individual sales events. Sales and marketing teams need to be part of continuous customer engagement for the entire journey. Persistent nurturing of customer experiences also plays an important role in customer retention and advocacy, and sales has a responsibility here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Source: Gary Magnone

 

 

The Customer Journey: Sketching Potential Experiences

There are organizations that still think that they can "design" customer experiences or regulate customer behavior. That's not ever going to happen, and it's a waste of time. The journey - the experiences - always belong to the customer, based on customer decisions. Many customer journeys are complex and erratic. Customer behavior can be unpredictable – journeys take twists and turns due to external influences and events beyond the organization. For one company and its products, there can be multiple customer / buyer journeys – just as there can be multiple customer categories and segments. It all depends on the products, how they are sold, the targets, and how well a company wants to interact with customers.

Customer journey square pegs cannot be hammered into company-desired round holes to fit inward-focused business processes. This is especially true for sales cycles or processes that only care about how a sales team wants to function – without any connection to how customers want to buy products and services. But organizations can design and orchestrate inspired and comprehensive support for customers across all internal functions and interaction channels anywhere. They can make sure that customers encounter consistent experiences anytime and that customers get what they need at any point in the journey.

Deep and broad customer understanding is necessary to: map customer journeys from customer perspectives; segment customers realistically; and comprehend customer needs and wants. Continuous customer intelligence is invaluable for nurturing better customer interactions that will make it easy for customers to buy from a company – and want to come back for more. Many current marketing processes provide what the sales team and others can put to good work: collections of customer action / transaction data, and the results of various analytics such as behavioral, social media and marketing automation.

Organizations also need to do a much better job of constructing integrated customer strategies at all levels, and should designate customer insight as a strategic core capability for the entire organization. Many companies still fall short on customer strategies, including specific customer experience strategic practices, as a recent Forrester study shows:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Source: Forrester Research

 

 

Aligning Sales Functions with the Customer Journey

Far too often organizations fail to:

• Understand customer journeys at all
• Connect sales process to customer journeys and to what marketing is doing to improve and nurture customer experiences
• Build content marketing approaches that support how the customer wants to buy and interact – and then interrelate sales process to these approaches

Too many organizations still only think in terms of the traditional sales cycle when considering sales interactions with customers – frequently with revenue as the main goal. There is little acknowledgement of what the customer needs or how the customer wants to do business. Of course revenue matters. But when the main focus of sales efforts shifts to the customer's journey, and the goal is positive customer experiences that can lead to purchases, revenue follows. When revenue is the main focus, the customer seems to disappear along with potential sales.

The customer journey at its core is about people learning about products, finding out how to buy, deciding if they want to buy, then buying or not. The right content plays a key role for many steps in the journey. The customer journey can also include: coming back multiple times, getting post-sales support, recommending products to friends and colleagues, "keeping in touch", and growing a relationship. So sales must be very much a part of all of this, especially in a world where many buyers may be halfway through (or more) their buying journeys before considering talking to sales.

 

 

 

                                            

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Source: Forrester Research

 

 

 

Content Approaches that Serve Customers, Marketing and Sales

First and foremost content marketing must provide high quality content that potential customers want and need at different points of the customer journey. And that same content can align well with the needs of sales teams. But this will happen only if key elements of sales processes are mapped appropriately to the customer journey. The continuous exploration of customers and what they value throughout the customer journey points the way to the content that will deliver authentic value to customers and help to build trust in the vendor organization, particularly sales.

Sales teams want to take advantage of the same customer intelligence that greatly improves content, especially for targeted, highly personalized messages and information sharing. Intelligence delivered by behavioral analytics, marketing automation, and other customer-focused processes have parallel purposes to help both marketing and sales better engage and serve customers. And for content marketing to deliver timely and relevant information from the customer perspective, continuously updated customer intelligence is critical.

Content that answers customer questions about the business problems they face, or addresses their interests in certain types of products and services, is not only the right content for effective content marketing but also the right content for sales teams. Both sales and marketing will better engage customers with content that demonstrates a deep understanding of the customer's business, particularly when that content explores how to solve problems, improve operations or expand business reach. Content that pushes the current customer mindset while teaching new ideas for the business is highly effective.

Many customer journeys begin well in advance of an active search for solutions. Potential customers are often more receptive to exploring new thinking long before they have defined a problem or need. Content marketing opens the door to planting ideas in the back of customer minds, regarding potential business issues and opportunities, and new ways to handle them. Content that addresses topics of interest to specific customer segments has the strong potential to deliver unique value and increase meaningful engagement.

In many companies, sales teams don't put much time into current customers – until they want to sell them something new. Content marketing is a means to keep sales teams in touch with customers continuously after the sale, without having an overt ax to grind. Sales teams can make use of quality content to interact with customers and find out real information about their ever-changing needs and desires. The right content can be a great conversation starter – as long as sales teams sit back and listen to what customers have to say.

 

The Engaged Customer is the Glue of Marketing and Sales Success

It could be said that everyone in a company is in sales and marketing. But the better notion is that everyone is in the business of improving customer experiences to make it easier for customers to purchase and make use of products and services. Personalizing the journey before, during and after the sale needs the involvement of all levels of the organization, driven by a hierarchy of customer-focused strategies.

As with responsive marketing approaches, sales teams must abandon one-size-fits-all "sales cycles" and personalize interactions with prospects using continuously updated customer insight and sophisticated content marketing approaches. By truly interacting with customers throughout the customer lifecycle, sales teams should have a better understanding of when a customer is ready to purchase and what it will take to help them make the buying decision.

 

About the author: Julie is an independent consultant and industry analyst for B2B software solutions, providing services to vendors to improve strategies for customers and target markets, products and solutions, and future direction. Julie has expertise in several solution spaces including: data integration and data quality; analytics and BI; business process, workflow and collaboration; digital marketing, WCM and social media; and the pivotal importance of user and customer experiences. Julie shares her takes on the software industry via her blog Highly Competitiveand on Twitter: @juliebhunt For more information: Julie Hunt Consulting – Strategies for B2B Software Solutions: Working from the Customer Perspective

 

Data Smarter Marketing: Big Data Analytics for Continuous Customer Insight

  

Comprehensive customer intelligence has become a priority for midsized companies. Insight derived from advanced analytics expands understanding of current and potential customers, and helps to achieve competitive advantage based on improved and more targeted marketing and sales. Sophisticated marketing technologies such as adaptive marketing and marketing automation require very precise customer knowledge to provide value both to companies and to their customers. To accomplish these imperatives, marketers need continuously updated and full-bodied views of customers and prospects to strengthen communications and support for all interactions and activities during the customer lifecycle.

McKinsey has focused on the ROI of big data analytics for marketing functions:

McKinsey analysis of more than 250 engagements over five years has revealed that companies that put data at the center of the marketing and sales decisions improve their marketing return on investment (MROI) by 15 – 20 percent. That adds up to $150 – $200 billion of additional value based on global annual marketing spend of an estimated $1 trillion.

 

            

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                 Source: IBM (full infographic below)

 

Many relevant information sources for advanced analytics related to marketing fall into the 'big data' category, which requires specialized skills and analytics processes. Marketing groups in midsized companies still have obstacles to overcome to gain the full use and benefits of advanced analytics, including adding more team members with the right skills and finding the right-fit analytics solutions. Information Week shared this information from a study by the Economist Intelligence Unit:

When asked which skills were most necessary for a successful marketer today, 37% of executives said that "using data analysis to extract predictive findings from 'big data'" mattered most. Five years ago, just 17% of executives said this was true, the EIU report says.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Source: IBM (full infographic below)

 

Marketing investments for working with a wider range of data sources through sophisticated analytics can bring big dividends to the entire organization. The results of customer and product analytics are of great value to functions across the organization including: customer service, product strategy and development, corporate strategies, and financial planning. In this sense, marketing analytics should be a holistic investment and obviously a strategic initiative from top to bottom for midsized companies.

Making use of advanced analytics is not meant to replace the creative vision and innovative ideas that humans develop and that are so important for effective marketing endeavors. But marketing functions need advanced analytics to keep the customer in full focus as the most important element for applying insightful context and relevance. In many cases, creativity is made better with insight from analytics for validation and amplification of the creative spark, as well as indicators of how to apply creative thinking. Marketers in midsized companies need to be 'data smarter' so as not to waste valuable (and frequently expensive) creative efforts and programs.

 

IBM Analytics Infographic: A Big Advantage for Midsize Businesses

IBM provides a great deal of research on analytics for Midmarket organizations, including the white paper: Analytics: A Blueprint for Value in Midmarket Organizations

 

IBM Infographic

 

 

This post was brought to you by IBM for Midsize Business and opinions are my own. To read more on this topic, visit  IBM's Midsize Insider. Dedicated to providing businesses with expertise, solutions and tools that are specific to small and midsized companies, the Midsize Business program provides businesses with the materials and knowledge they need to become engines of a smarter planet.

 

 

About the author: Julie Hunt understands the overlap and convergence of many business processes and software solutions that once were thought of as "separate" – and how this impacts software Vendors and Buyers, as well as the strategies that enterprises implement for how technology supports the business and its customers. Julie shares her takes on the software industry via her blog Highly Competitiveand on Twitter: @juliebhunt For more information: Julie Hunt Consulting – Strategies for B2B Software Solutions: Working from the Customer Perspective

 

Why Midsized Software Vendors Need the Guidance of A Generalist Who’s A Specialist

 

I love the software industry, particularly the continuous change and innovation, the unexpected twists and turns, that lead to new trajectories. I've worked in this industry for quite a while, starting off as a developer in the IT group at Texas Instruments. Over the years, I've had the pleasure to take on a variety of roles, all of which has given me a unique perspective when looking at technology and how it's used by businesses.

The world has been turned upside down for most software companies: increased and unexpected competition, uncertain global economy, customers constantly morphing, volatile and disruptive solution markets, customer-driven sales, and constant technological change. The strategic capabilities to effectively differentiate and position a software vendor are in constant flux.

Often software vendors need outside advisors and strategists to help them take on new perspectives, call out current wrong turns, and put together new competitive direction – with guidance for how to make it all happen. An outside consultant brings the advantage of not being embroiled in company politics, "drunk" on the company kool-aid, or blindly enamored of the company technology.

To truly make a difference for midsized software companies, an outside consultant should be first of all a Generalist, to pull together the optimal end objectives, and then a Specialist, to understand how to get there. The generalist meets the challenge of connecting the right dots across many domains to construct a valuable new 'big picture' of possibilities. The specialist makes sure that strategies are rooted in reality for a particular software vendor and its customers, and understands logistical issues that could impact execution.

 

'Master of Many Trades': The New Generalist

It's tempting to label today's generalist as "jack of all trades, master of none". But this clichéd phrase doesn't come close to the strengths embodied by the category-bending generalist. My generalist strengths draw on the mastery that I have in many areas – all of which come into play for upping the game for my clients. Generalists help companies do a better job of meeting customer needs, developing useful and forward-looking products, and going to market with the right mindset by understanding how these different elements have to work together to achieve success.

Generalists are driven by an insatiable curiosity: we quickly understand new ideas and concepts, continuously consume information, and usually go after research and analysis in hyper-drive. The generalist's broad diversity of perspective and experience is key to achieving innovative and creative thinking. A wide variety of knowledge combined with intelligent questioning of the status quo open new ways of seeing and doing things. As a generalist I'm wired to provide strategic context for my client projects, deliver the key points, and lay out clear guidance for actions to take and why.

The means to solve large problems and create the basis for new value usually run across multiple disciplines, lines of business, and even industries.Innovative thinking comes from connecting concepts, technologies, practices in ways not previously envisioned – with components often coming from outside the vendor's current solution domain and comfort zone. Innovation results from associative thinking or idea mashups:connecting known but frequently disparate concepts or constructs to create something new that can take companies in advantageous directions on less-traveled paths.

 

And Then There's the Specialist in Me

It's very important to develop good strategies. But it's also important to help software vendors with the execution of those strategies, with high level planning based on the realities that exist for a particular company. To give my clients the innovative ideas and strategies that will work for them and their customers, I draw on my specialist background to provide a pointed focus on how software should be developed, marketed and sold for a particular purpose that will solve real customer problems.

The specialist in me comes from:

• Hands on work in multiple software solution domains
• Different roles: technical, customer-facing, go-to-market
• IT team experience
• Entrepreneurial business experience
• Detail-oriented analytical skills (analytical abilities relate both to specialists and generalists)
• Creative bent
• Advanced communications proficiency
• Customer interactions of many kinds -- related to software solutions, specific industries and solving business problems

 

Devising Strategies for B2B Software Companies is Multi-Layered

Software solution spaces started off as silos. But it's no longer possible for software technologies to exist in a vacuum within any company. Enterprises need better integrated systems and processes. Over recent years, solutions have developed more overlap and convergence with one another. Software vendors had better understand this new playing field, as well as the endless number of new innovations for different kinds of solutions and how they are delivered to customers. The convergence of software solutions means competition can come from any direction. It also means most solution spaces are commoditized.

Software vendors and buyers alike need strategies and expert guidance to optimize how they support today's integrated enterprises: how different software applications fit together, how to evolve practices and processes for users to best take advantage of new technologies – even how to evolve cultural changes for the internal enterprise. Changes in how enterprises function affect software vendors as much as buyers.

Readers of my writing here in my blog and other publications may wonder what I do professionally, since I cover a wide variety of business technology topics. To provide real and actionable advice on strategies, I have to understand the many layers of creating, marketing, selling, and ultimately using B2B software solutions. I bring a great deal of value to the work I do for my clients because of what I know and what I have experienced from real world implementations of various software solutions and working with buyers and users.

I constantly keep tabs on:

• Specialized knowledge of many customer industries, to understand how technology makes a difference for these industries and customers
• Multidimensional knowledge of the Customer and the customer experience: how and why customers research, buy, use software solutions
• What vendors need to do to offer the solutions and experiences that best benefit their customers
• Optimal target markets and customers for various B2B software vendors
• Deep knowledge of many software solution spaces and how they fit together for most companies
• Focused insight that plays well for midsized and smaller vendors
• Activities of the overall array of B2B software vendors

 

Strong Authentic Customer Focus is Everything

Your customers are your company – period. Whether your company sells software or your company uses software, your main strategic goal should be Successful Customers. To focus on what customers need, the people of the enterprise and their technologies have to work well together. The customer-focused enterprise can achieve growth and competitiveness -- by delivering what their customers want and need, for now and the future.

But software vendors continue to struggle with prioritizing the Customer over their business-as-usual, ingrained product and self-focused strategies. I provide the guidance and expertise to help vendors look at technology solutions from customer perspectives, and build connections from their software solutions to the problems customers want to solve.

 

Why You Need Help from the Generalist and Specialist That I Am

If you're reading this article, it's likely that you work in the software industry. You may already realize that software vendors often put too much focus on technologies and features, and fail to connect with the right potential customers to meet their needs. Vendors must transform product and go-to-market strategies to focus on how their solutions help their customers improve their businesses, meet critical objectives, and work more effectively. 

Business growth strategies start with customer insights. Customers are changing, very quickly – as are solution markets. Vendors must keep up. Software companies need to get better at creating and growing the right solutions, that work they way users work. Realistic competitive differentiation comes from meeting the needs of the right target markets and customers with high quality products and services, and from making a commitment to outstanding customer experiences for every interaction.       

It would be my pleasure to be your partner in making your software company more successful, with current and future solution strategies. I'll help you re-invent your software company: from business model innovation to new services and solutions, more targeted markets, true customer focus, and effective go-to-market strategies. More information – What I Do for Vendors and Buyers

 

 

Image source: creativegeneralist.com

 

 

Related Links

B2B Software Strategies: Startups, Starting from Scratch, Re-Inventing

Internal Disruption–No Longer Business As Usual

Customer Buying Criteria - Applying customer & competitive intelligence to selling tools leads to strategic internal benefits

Three Journeys: Lifecycles of Enterprise Software Buyers & End Users

Symbiosis: Customer Experience and Business Process

Strategies from Top to Bottom - Content Marketing for B2B Software Vendors

The Customer Journey: Content Marketing for B2B Software Buyers

Selling Software Solutions to SMB / Mid-Market Companies – Who and How To Target

The Irrelevance of Porter's Five Forces for the B2B Software Industry

 

 

About the author: Julie is an independent consultant and industry analyst for B2B software solutions, providing services to vendors to improve strategies for customers and target markets, products and solutions, and future direction. Julie has expertise in several solution spaces including: data integration and data quality; analytics and BI; business process, workflow and collaboration; digital marketing, WCM and social media; and the pivotal importance of user and customer experiences. Julie shares her takes on the software industry via her blog Highly Competitiveand on Twitter: @juliebhunt For more information: Julie Hunt Consulting – Strategies for B2B Software Solutions: Working from the Customer Perspective