Feature Article: The next big thing?

The next big thing may not be a ‘killer application’ - the computer industry’s magazine may be running low on ‘silver bullets’. The big challenges of the next few years may be surprisingly mundane. As applications have developed they have become more complex and more expensive. In order to deploy new and exotic applications, you need to have deployed the simpler tools and realised the benefit. This is more likely to be the case in larger companies. In recent years the knowledge and skills gap between staff working within organisations who ‘know’ IT and those who don’t has become a serious challenge. The chain is, after all, only as strong as its weakest link.

This was less of an issue in the ‘old world’ where enterprises were substantially closed hierarchies. In the new world of outsourcing, where the enterprise is a network of separate businesses, the rules have changed. To realise the benefits of the new class of collaborative applications, such as SCM, PLM or CRM, all the participants in the extended enterprise need to use the tools in a similar way and attribute the same level of importance to the task.

We all know that selling technology to the CIO alone no longer works. Selling ‘solutions’ to the LOB managers has been working. However, in the extended enterprise, selling to the company at the top of the chain can lead to stalled implementations, if these companies lack the power to impose the solution on their partners. There is evidence that this is happening already.

Flawed implementations will yield unsatisfactory ROI. Vendors who want to sell collaborative solutions within the extended enterprise need to understand how to achieve consistency in terms of commitment to the solution and applications competence. A big project means that a large number of people will need training, and training at sensible prices.

This should be very good news for channel partners. But the role the channel can play does not appear to be appreciated, and the vendors’ marketing strategy seldom attempts to integrate their potential contribution. IT vendors need solutions, marketing strategies and go-to-market models that are multi-touch across the industry segments they target. Every potential participant in a collaborative network must be in tune with the same story.

In future, sales success may be about coordination of marketing and sales campaigns of very broad proportions. Nobody ever said it would get easier!

Bob Brown
email: bob.brown@cambashi.com

Also in this issue:

Hot Topic: Design Data Operability – A PLM pre-requisite?
Allan Behrens discusses the issues surrounding the provision of truly integrated solutions that will provide the next manufacturing leap in productivity….

Book Review: The death of e and the birth of the real new economy
Nick Ballard recommends a book which could appeal to both casual readers and business review managers.

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