Enterprise software
ENTERPRISE SOFTWARE
Reps and consultants are thoroughly schooled in a special language called vendor-speak
Enterprise software is a multi-billion dollar industry that keeps a lot of us in gainful employment. But it wasn’t always so. In the sixties and seventies, companies developed their own rudimentary and unreliable systems, even though many basic business processes were very similar, eg payroll and acacounting. Hence the idea of enterprise software, whose basic premise was ‘why should companies run multiple, unreliable systems when they could all run the same unreliable system instead?’ So one day some clever consulting firm saw the opportunity and took a complex and unreliable system – and started selling it to other companies!
Software vendors pack as many features as they can into each new version. The more check-boxes you can tick off, the better. Hence the mind-numbing complexity of ERP and CRM solutions, to name the main culprits. In general, these systems have shown themselves to be far from the panaceas they were initially made out to be. Companies that thought they were going to get a leg up on the competition soon found themselves stumbling with their panacea down around their knees.
Because of the high price tag, enterprise software is usually acquired through an RFP process, which is really an organizational joke, because behind the façade of objectivity, neutrality and integrity there usually lies a hidden agenda. The vast majority of companies have a fairly good idea of which vendor they want to go with, but because of the sums involved they have to be seen to be going through the motions of evaluating competitors, which is where the RFP comes in. RFPs are rarely put together by the people concerned, because they are usually far too busy – or wouldn’t know how to put one together anyway. So it is inevitably turned over to a “suitably briefed” consulting company, ie one who is knowledgeable in the solution of the pre-anointed vendor.
Once the RFP has been issued and vendors suitably short-listed, the next phase is the product demonstration. Demos are like beauty contests: though the final decision is supposedly based on a wide range of objective criteria, first impressions of physical characteristics are important. An attractive user interface, a thin client and a slim footprint will usually elicit appreciable stares and comments from both men and women on the customer side.
Once the demo gets under way, pre-sales consultants will go out of their way to project an air of ‘aw, shucks’ honesty, trust and confidence, almost as if they were speaking from the heart. Which is of course a façade, because vendors never speak from the heart, only from the script. And the closer they stick to the script, the better they come across. Which is why they hate RFPs with a passion, because it breaks up the script and obliges them to focus on irrelevant things – like the customer’s business requirements!
Sales reps and pre-sales consultants are thoroughly schooled in a special language called vendor-speak, whose cardinal rule is very simple: as far as possible always answer ‘Yes’ to any question. Naïve users make this easy by asking open-ended questions like ‘can your product do this or that?’ More astute users will rather ask ‘how does your product do this or that?’. Even when there is reasonable doubt, still answer ‘Yes’. You can even get away with ‘Absolutely!’, since you can always backtrack later by saying there was a misunderstanding (most of these packages are so complex anyway…). And if you can’t answer ‘Yes’, then there is a whole variety of fallbacks, the most common of which are ‘that can easily be customized’ or ‘not in the current version’. Particularly difficult questions can be met with ‘that’s not part of our business model’.
Finally, after using the new software for a couple of years, customers have to go through an upgrade, at which time they usually learn that a lot of their so-called configuration and customization – which was implicitly encouraged by the vendor and the consultants during the sales cycle as the answer to any missing requirements – are not automatically upgraded. Which therefore has to be revisited at their own cost – inevitably with the help of the vendor or the same consultants (hmmm…).
But let’s not get negative here. Upgrades are not always unwelcome or expensive. Even the most cynical and hardened users of enterprise software will readily acknowledge the value of one upgrade – the one that bumps you up to business class! MG
