Highly Competitive - software industry insights

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

 

For anyone selling software solutions, a strong and well-crafted web presence is de rigueur for connecting with potential customers or with the “customer as Buyer”. More and more purchasing of various software solutions is becoming an online event, fueled by the growing success of SaaS, cloud, and open source options. SMB / Mid-Market buyers, who don’t have a lot of time for purchase cycles, want to do business with vendors who make it much easier to reach a decision.

 

 

According to Forrester’s Megan Burns, Web Sites That Don't Support Customers' Goals Waste Millions:

 

“Results show that the vast majority of people switch to more expensive channels…Others give up and go to a competitor, while still others abandon their goals entirely. …for an average retailer the result is millions of dollars in lost revenue and unnecessary costs. Firms should use the data and models in this report to understand their own exposure to these failures and make a strong case for fixing usability problems that drive consumers away from the site.”

    (Forrester 2010)

 

While the Forrester study focuses on online retail, the implications are highly relevant to software vendors targeting SMB and Mid-Market companies, since these B2B buyers primarily use the internet as the gateway to software purchases.  These buyers also encounter similar difficulties trying to navigate software vendor websites to find relevant content and support to help them make buying decisions.  

 

With buyers focused on the web as a purchasing gateway, B2B software vendors are no longer the sole owners of influencing brand perception – many online venues now play significant roles for influencing buyers, and many of these online venues are not controlled by the vendor.  However, the vendor still has control of providing a high quality web presence through its corporate website and the power to increase findability for the right “customers as buyers”.  While buyers reference other influencer sites, software vendors can contribute greatly to attracting and persuading buyers if buyers can easily find well-crafted and useful content on the vendor website. 

 

Vendors should exercise all necessary resources to exceed the buyer expectations and needs when visiting the vendor website. Not being highly findable as a web presence for the right buyer content will put into motion the potential for buyers to turn to other sites, many of which lead to competitors.

 

 

Website Findablity, Usability, User Experience – They Really Matter

If buyers can’t find, via the internet, what a vendor has to offer, then the vendor is plain old losing real prospects and sales every day.  Findability addresses the importance of websites being quickly found, easily accessed and distinctly identifiable with the B2B software vendor’s offerings.  With the mercurial nature of the internet and individual vendor web presence, findability requires constant attention and fine-tuning.

 

Unfortunately many B2B software vendor websites are built from the vendor’s perspective to support its own processes for marketing and sales – instead of from the perspective of the “customer as buyer”.  And most of these vendor websites have failed to provide easy access to high quality content that helps buyers make purchase decisions about the vendor offerings. B2B software vendors have a great opportunity to establish a more integrated and interactive web presence that pulls together people, tools, services and content.

 

There are lots of methods and tools to increase website findability: SEO optimization, recommendations / social search, Google marketing offerings, Web Standards, and so on.  But the right kind of content, including social media, is key to attracting and keeping buyers on the software vendor website because these buyers have a list of items (and expectations) deemed necessary for deciding if the vendor’s software solutions are what they need.  As the quality and diversity of content on the vendor website increases, so does the findability – as well as potential buyer interest.

 

Social media venues (communities, forums, blogs, wikis, Twitter, Facebook, etc.), both on the vendor’s website and other well-visited sites, can be used with dual purpose:  first to provide quality content, user interaction, and collaboration experiences that draw buyers to the vendor; and then, to provide dynamic research sources for better understanding the SMB / Mid-Market buyers that the vendor is targeting. Ongoing vendor participation should take place on the vendor’s social sites and on external social sites that are strategic to connecting with target customers.

 

This post from Jeremiah Owyang (Altimeter Group) provides timely insight into creating a buyer/customer-centric web presence that integrates with social media and why this matters. There are two very useful charts: one covers feature/benefits of integrating social networking sites, and the other details the integrations available from popular social networking sites.

Roadmap: Make Your Corporate Websites Relevant: Integrate Social Network Features

 

 

OK – Buyers have found the software vendor’s website…  

Now -- are there content and user experience worth finding? – How easily can buyers tap into what the website offers?  Buyers come to a software vendor’s website with expectations. Creating and structuring the website from the usability perspective of the buyer (or buyers if targeting multiple buyer types) will greatly support ease of finding relevant content and will generate positive user experiences.

 

SMB / Mid-Market buyers of B2B software generally want a wide variety of information about the products and solutions, input from communities and forums, clear pricing, and other information that will guide them to making a buying decision.  They would like this content in easy-to-download formats - without having to answer lots of questions to enable the download. There is an increasing 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.

 

 

Content Sought Out by Software Solution Buyers

Anything provided on the vendor website should be authentic, high quality content that answers real buyer questions. “Real” content engages buyers, so invest in subject matter experts who can write relevant, sharp and interesting documents, articles and posts. Vendors should provide links to industry writers, influencer blogs and communities, and to analysts who contribute insight regarding the vendor’s solution space and the competitive landscape. When significant negative content is published about the vendor, it’s smart to deal with it head-on through a vendor blog, as well as through any external social sites that are relevant – be honest and focused, always responding with the buyer’s POV in mind.

 

Content that buyers would like to see on the vendor website:

 

à  Products and solutions information

· White papers providing orientations for both technical and business problems

· Product and solution datasheets  

· Technical specifications

· Best practices / company approach to solving problems with the vendor solutions (lots of details)

· Case studies with real meat

 

à  Social media

Incorporating social media in the vendor website further provides the opportunity to create a more personalized customer experience. The website should provide vendor-sponsored social media sites and links to external social sites. Buyer-friendly social media include: communities, blogs, wikis, forums, RSS, self-serve webcasts and podcasts, video sharing sites, social networking sites. As with findability and usability, social media requires real commitment, constant nurturing and responsiveness to anyone participating in the vendor’s social sites. Social media offers a fantastic venue for building relationships with “customers as buyers”, for collaborating with them on the future direction of the vendor’s offerings, and to respond quickly to questions and issues.   

 

à  External Content from Influencers – which include current customers

· Communities, forums, blogs – the ones external to vendor website

· Coverage, reviews by industry writers and influencer blogs

· Analyst coverage – especially from analysts that specialize in software for SMB / Mid-Market

 

à  Pricing

For SMB / Mid-Market buyers, pricing should be published on the website, should be straight-forward, and always up-to-date.  These buyers are not interested in drawn out sales cycles – they will simply move on to another vendor if the clock has been ticking too long.  Many buyers would like to make most software purchases via the website, whenever possible.  SaaS, cloud, OSS software options are changing how SMB / Mid-Market buyers expect to purchase software, or software services.

 

à  RFP Q&A – standardized answers

The more likely initiators of RFP requests are the upper tiers of the Mid-Market, rather than “classic SMB”. Most RFP/RFI documents follow a basic format widely used in software industry, with a large majority of questions repeating from buyer to buyer.  So it might be a good idea to build out an engaging presentation of RFP Q&A on the website, utilizing newer media including podcasts and video. If done well (findable-usable-engaging), buyers could find answers on their own, satisfying buyer desire for self-service. Also providing online RFP Q&A could eliminate the time-wasting situation of the vendor being used as “column fodder”.  Online publication of RFP Q&A demands constant updating and refinement to be useful to customers.

 

There are potential hazards for publishing online RFP’s:

· Relevance to buyer needs is not always supported by the usual RFP structure unless multiple RFPs are mapped to various buyer solution scenarios

· Validity of vendor strengths and weaknesses depends on how those strengths and weaknesses map to the most important requirements of each buyer project – generic RFP content may not be able to make a clear assessment and could have negative effect

· Competitors will now know more about how the vendor responds to certain questions while not providing corresponding data on their own websites

So it might be best to provide higher level, but meaty, content for unrestricted access, and then require buyer registration and validation before sharing access to deeper content, especially if a mutual NDA is necessary for more ‘sensitive” information.

 

à  Competitor Comparisons

Software solution buyers often list “competitor comparisons” as a content type that they’d like to find on a vendor website.  However, there are real issues that a vendor must consider before attempting competitor comparisons:

· Mainly, legal constraints related to claims made about what a competitor does or doesn’t do, as compared to the vendor – lawsuits could arise from buyers or competitors regarding claims made

· Even if an “objective” third-party is engaged to create competitor comparisons, such comparisons are frequently tedious and expensive to execute

· Relevance – points in competitor comparisons may not be of importance to all buyers or relate well to their needs

· Commoditization – software offerings in same solution space generally have many of the same feature/functions so competitor comparisons have reduced impact

 

 

Aligning “Findable Web Presence” with Social Selling and Social CRM

Focusing on the buyer-centricity of a vendor’s web presence by improving the findability and usability of the website and by building out proper social media connections to potential buyers also brings alignment with initiatives for social customer relationship management (the strategic practice, not just the technology) and with programs for social selling. This is especially important for SMB / Mid-Market software vendors who need to maximize existing resources for these important initiatives.

 

These three inter-related initiatives nurture quality buyer experiences. And these initiatives are dependent on the vendor being willing to continuously engage in real bi-directional “conversations” with buyers and to act on buyer feedback. Vendors will greatly enhance long-term loyalty, buyer success, and the ability to continuously understand what buyers need by building a composite of excellent web presence / findability / quality content, combined with lively support of social media and true buyer support through social CRM.

 

Social selling taps into social culture and makes use of social media to build relationships and hold conversations with potential buyers. Listening well, presenting compelling content, meeting buyer needs are important aspects of social selling. Likewise, social CRM strives to provide support for buyer success with the vendor’s software offerings, aligned with the “lifecycle of the customer support” (pre- and post-sale).  (More on social CRM for B2B vendors)

 

For social selling, social networking and collaborative sites help sales to connect with buyers on buyer terms:  in venues where buyers are looking for solutions to problems, asking about specific kinds of software solutions, exploring competitor solutions. Sales teams can tap into what matters to potential buyers in order to connect on a real basis. Monitoring social media sites can also help sales teams identify the key influencers for target buyers.

 

 

And Finally, Always Make Sure There’s a Software Solution Worth Buying

Software vendors sometimes forget that it is equally important to deliver quality solutions that are: relatively easy to implement, do the job they’re supposed to do, perform well, and provide clear benefits to the buyer. Quality solutions should be the main objective of any software vendor.

 

 

Related posts:   

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

 

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

 

Moving beyond WCM - Web Experience Management software solutions and markets

 

 

 

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  

 

 

The incongruous worlds of “data integration” – Making data accessible for any-size companies

 

Companies of all sizes derive competitive advantage from technology systems that in turn support numerous business applications. Many variations on software solutions populate different kinds of enterprises. Customer relationship management (CRM), sales force automation (SFA), enterprise resource planning (ERP), supply chain management (SCM), and so forth, provide necessary tools for most businesses.  As implemented by enterprise-level, mid-market, and even SMB, companies, the complexity of applications continues to increase, as has the need for continuously integrating and transforming data that provide the life blood for these applications.

 

Enterprises probably are not spending enough time, money or resources on data integration (DI) software/services – part of the blame may fall to the broad range of options for DI solutions. The current data integration software/services market, while robust, is also highly fragmented and somewhat confusing.  From Enterprise Data Warehousing (EDW) and Master Data Management (MDM) costing millions -- to data mashups, and dashboards based on Excel -- data integration software solutions span a broad spectrum of cost and complexity for all sizes of companies.  DI offerings are proliferating to meet the demands of diverse data management and integration problems.

 

 

Companies are faced with making decisions about which DI solution, or solutions, to choose – while weighing current and future requirements, cost, usability, reusability, speed to solution.  Instead of purchasing software, many times companies will simply try to build a DI process or solution based on custom code. Custom code has been cited by the industry as the #1 competitor for DI software offerings of any sort, for several years now. But custom code is usually not the best avenue to travel for most DI projects.

 

 

As has been noted by Rick Sherman, mid-market / SMB companies may not be aware of many newer DI tools that are the right fit for their needs and budgets, and therefore have not seriously pursued the purchase of data integration software solutions, instead of hand coding.  The solutions that are most publicized are the high-end solutions from Oracle, IBM, Informatica, SAP-Business Objects, etc., so it may seem to mid-market and smaller companies that DI tools are expensive and difficult to use.  The high-end vendors are also the usual focus of industry analyst benchmark reports, such as the Forrester Wave and the Gartner Magic Quadrant. But there are many DI software alternatives that could be the right fit for many companies, that are cheaper and easier to use. 

 

 

(Originally a 2009 MQ was here - but Garnter demanded its removal. JH - 6/12/2014)

 

 

  

Larger Enterprise Data Integration Software Tools – Gartner definition for 2009 Magic Quadrant

Gartner has defined several classes of functional capabilities that vendors of data integration tools must possess to deliver optimal value to organizations in support of a full range of data integration scenarios:

·Connectivity/adapter capabilities (data source and target support)

·Data delivery capabilities

·Data transformation capabilities

·Metadata and data modeling capabilities

·Design and development environment capabilities

·Data governance capabilities (data quality, profiling and mining)

·Deployment options and runtime platform capabilities

·Operations and administration capabilities

·Architecture and integration

·Service-enablement capabilities

 

 

 

 

Does The Gartner MQ Help Most Companies Select Data Integration Tools?

With its focus on primarily high-end vendors and solutions, the Gartner MQ itself presents only a fraction of vendors that are operating in the overall competitive landscape.  While the Gartner document has provided an extensive list of 40+ vendors that are NOT included in the MQ, there is not enough information to assist with buying decisions. 

 

 

 

So the Gartner MQ for DI Tools focuses on solutions meant primarily for larger projects:  EDW, MDM, CDI, B2B data exchanges. It’s not clear if any of these vendor offerings would be cost-effective for less-complex needs. The 2009 MQ does include some DI alternative vendors such as Talend (OSS, cloud options) and Pervasive (on-premise and SaaS/cloud options) – but again, there are many more options available that have not been covered by the Gartner MQ and that companies should definitely explore.

 

 

 

Data Integration Variations – lots of options, which to choose?

 

 

 

 

Integrating data in a way that is meaningful to each enterprise

No matter which integration tools and methods are adopted, data is still the key – whether handled in concrete or abstract fashion. Understanding from a strategic point of view, how the company’s data matters not only to immediate projects/processes, but how it impacts the long-term plans and success of the enterprise, is essential to understanding which tools will be the best choice.  Until recently, most companies have used data integration solutions to solve tactical problems but it’s really time to focus on strategic planning and utilization. 

 

 

Many larger enterprises have traditionally thought it best to build a foundation of data warehousing and ETL processes, which have proven to be expensive, time-consuming, and frequently insufficient for overall data access needs in the enterprise. This sort of DW foundation can be difficult to implement, maintain, change, or even use. Other difficult – and costly – data initiatives have been introduced into the larger enterprise: master data management (MDM), customer data integration (CDI), complex data.  MDM in concept makes sense, but the pain of making it happen so far has kept many companies from implementations.

 

 

Companies of all sizes need alternative solutions and new methods that are faster to implement, easier to deploy and use, with more functionality based on OOTB and/or service-oriented architecture.  There has been an increase in pre-packaged, lower-priced offerings that solve specific DI business problems – hopefully this trend will continue.  Industry-specific integrations based on pre-fab templates and integration appliances for CRM, SFA, B2B data exchanges, are also increasing. All of these approaches usually provide tools/services for customizations.

 

 

Beyond the tools for effecting integration processes, easy-to-use tools are needed for simply understanding and planning strategic architecture for data access and applications, especially tools suitable for mid-market/SMB companies with fewer IT/developer resources. From the “big picture”, companies can design smaller, incremental projects and processes for essential data integration and management.

 

 

Important to the any-size company is the integrity of the data – “bad” data will render any process or application useless.  Less expensive tools for data profiling and data quality must become available.  Right now most data quality software solutions are expensive and complex. (And hopefully few enterprises are attempting to hand-code data quality processes, as most custom code approaches to DQ come up painfully short.)

 

 

 

Overall Data Integration Software Market Outlook Great

Data Integration initiatives, and the sale of DI tools, are proliferating in healthy numbers, especially compared to other software solution segments.  This reflects the value of data accessibility for many company needs, including improving competitiveness via analytics/BI for any-size companies.  Companies are setting priorities for obtaining better, cleaner, and more timely data out of their operational systems.  Data integration software solutions usually provide the best path to achieve such goals.

 

 

Gartner’s Mark McDonald recently pointed out increases in DI-related spending, commenting that customers will invest "in business intelligence applications and information consolidation in order to raise enterprise visibility and transparency, particularly around sales and operational performance."

 

 

Phillip Russom of TDWI: "One of the interesting wrinkles here is that these (BI / DI solutions) are now being considered an infrastructure, whose maintenance needs occasional augmentation. This new mindset -- by both technical and business people -- which considers DI/DQ/MDM to be infrastructure [i.e., akin to networks and broadband] is helping these technologies get -- or keep -- resources, despite a lock-down on general IT spending."

 

 

An IDC report estimates that the worldwide data integration and access software market will grow to US$3.8 billion in 2012, reflecting 8.7 percent CAGR from 2007 to 2012.

 

 

 

In the 2009 Data Integration Tools Magic Quadrant, “Gartner estimates the size of the market for data integration tools at approximately $1.34 billion as of the end of 2008, and forecasts growth at a five-year compound annual rate of approximately 9.4%. While the forecast growth has been substantially curtailed due to current economic conditions, this growth rate is very healthy compared with most other software segments.”  Gartner growth estimates calculated earlier in 2008 forecast the data integration tools market at nearly $2 billion by end of 2008, with projected 17% annual growth rate for software and supporting services revenue. (Market Trends: Data Integration Tools, Worldwide, 2007-2012)

 

 

 

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  

Empty warnings: SaaS and OSS software solutions will NOT eliminate the need for Product Marketing / Product Management

Recent articles have been bouncing around trumpeting the demise of product management and product marketing for the software industry, as SaaS and OSS solutions gain traction in many markets.  The ridiculous notion is that somehow SaaS and OSS will self-evolve their continuous overall strategies for future development.  Additionally these articles seem to propose that these software solution models will have no need for marketing -- customers simply “discover” them and snap them up. 

 

The reality is that SaaS and OSS software companies are actually going to need Product Marketing and Product Management even more as more and more SaaS, OSS, and hybrid offerings proliferate.  SaaS and OSS are not of themselves solution differentiators when it comes to winning and keeping customers.  In fact, SaaS and OSS delivery models have a definite solution commoditization effect on the market, as it is much easier and faster for software companies to go to market with such offerings – and for customers to come and go at will.  Hybrids that cross over into traditional on-premise licensing will also increase commoditization.

 

SaaS and OSS offerings are facing market demands to more clearly address customer business needs and problems, rather than continue to provide only one-size-fits-all products.  SaaS and OSS offerings will have to evolve into industry-specific solutions to attain and keep competitive edge, in a marketplace where SaaS and OSS are becoming commoditized.  The inherit nature of Saas and OSS no longer provides differentiation.

 

So Product Marketing and Product Management will be needed more than ever to derive true solution positioning, differentiation and value for customer requirements.  More focus will have to emphasize real company problems and needs, with a lot more emphasis on industry and scenario level solutions that are fully fleshed out.  To do so will take excellent work from Product Marketing and Product Management teams.

 

Product Marketing and Product Management teams are far better equipped to answer the number one question from prospective customers:  why should I buy/adopt your software?

 

The vision for future markets is built on the work of product marketing and product management professionals, with a strong assist from mature Market Intelligence programs.  Future direction cannot be decided by the developer community or even user community (whether OSS or SaaS) but comes from broad composite of multiple constituencies plus extensive research/analysis of future trends and potential markets of interest. 

 

Requirements management still matters for OSS and SaaS, especially with the constant and frequent releases.  Management of many smaller releases has to tie back to the “big picture” of what the overall software offering should be.

 

OSS and SaaS business software solutions have not yet had the decades of time to mature as their client/server predecessors. Therefore, the level of functionality and capability among the systems varies greatly. Taking a methodical approach to aligning business requirements to software capabilities will prevent missteps, achieve the most trouble-free implementation and realize the maximum ROI. To achieve this requires strong product marketing, product management and market intelligence professionals to guide OSS / SaaS solutions to success.

 

Beyond acquiring new customers, retention of existing customers has become of great importance, especially to SaaS vendors, since it’s relatively easy for customers to walk away. Current customers are always prospective customers. Such customer retention volatility greatly benefits from marketing efforts from Product Marketing and Product Management teams.

 

Value adds of Product Marketing / Product Management:

· OSS in particular has been criticized for lack of solutions that connect to customer needs and very little in terms of industry solutions or expertise.  SaaS has also come up short for providing industry-focused solutions.

· Evolving OSS products to solutions  that address customer business problems

· Understanding the competitive landscape to produce better solutions and true competitive positioning

· Business users are eclipsing IT as the primary buyer – it takes Product Marketing / Product Management to understand this new buyer class, and BU buyers are different in each industry segment

· Understanding customer POV and why it matters

· Addressing usability for different classes of users:  OSS falls short for the business user; SaaS falls short for IT management and customization requirements

· Managing social marketing for effective use, countering negative posts, monitoring sentiment affinity, optimizing website content and presentation for inbound marketing

· Brand differentiation and awareness – building respect for the brand because it delivers on the promise

 

 

If high quality, agile marketing is not adopted by OSS and SaaS vendors, then sales engagements will constantly degenerate into pricing wars similar to those plaguing on-premise licensed software offerings. Potential customers will not be able to relate offerings to business needs and will not see the full value of OSS / SaaS solutions.

 

 

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