Big vendors, big risk

Big traditional software companies are taking advantage of their customers in a way that’s almost impossible to explain to a rational human being, and in any other context would actually be recognized as a scam.

This occurs with all the solutions out there from big vendors; you know who they are, usually a combination of these words: SALES, MARKETING, CLOUD, FORCE, DYNAMIC.

These vendors make companies pay millions of dollars up front, and then even more in consultancy for implementing in every market (which is usually carried out by terrible local partners of the vendor).

This way, the risk falls 100% on the side of the customer: you paid millions up front, so now you have to make it work. And we know from experience that these projects usually fail in different ways:

• • Implementation takes years and years, never arriving to markets.
  • When it does arrive, markets cannot pay for the consultancy to customize it locally, thus continuing to use local or marketing agency solutions, as explained in our episode 3 “When IT Bullying leads to terrible solutions”
  • If it is implemented, nobody uses it, since the scope of the solution doesn’t fit their needs. This is particularly true when implementing CRMs in Consumer Goods & Services companies. See our episode 1  “Why consumer brands don’t need a CRM”  

Reasons behind the madness

The reasons why this happens are very rational for the decision maker, but also go 100% against what the company needs. This is just a sample of how these decisions are made; we have all seen this repeatedly at corporations:

• • “The standard vendor is too big to fail, the project will be OK”.   Real life shows us that it’s the other way around- these projects fail constantly and are one of the reasons why we still have a market to sell Thalamus to.
  • “I chose the standard solution that everyone has, it wasn’t my fault. . This is a childish rant, not the rationale of an executive.
  • “The standard vendor will give me exposure, invite me to events everywhere and help my personal career, even offering me a job in a few years”.  While true, that’s not what the company needs.

It’s time to challenge the Status Quo

In this new world where budgets and investments are tighter than ever, it’s even more important to start taking a different approach to IT vendor selection and stop acting like mindless lemmings. Just choosing what everybody is familiar with doesn’t cut it anymore.