Ouch, that one hurts. But let’s take a step back and figure it out so we can then learn from it. ‘Cause sitting around rendering first aide to our wounded egos won’t solve any problems.
Two quotes from the press release stand out for me:
"We thought we made a good decision based on our needs and what our consultants recommended. We came to find out later our consultants and the research company we paid, make the same vendor recommendation to everyone," said one VP of Sales.
and
Technology vendors pay analyst firms to write supposedly "objective" white papers.
Ok, the first one. I’m not sure how others do this, but I make no secret of the fact that I am a Microsoft Dynamics CRM advocate. It is very versatile, never-ending, extensible, user-friendly, and on and on. Is is a perfect fit for everyone? Nope, probably not. BUT my job is to take in the needs of the customer, process it thru the maze of CRM knowledge in my head and available to me and then come back out on the other side with recommendations using the CRM product I prefer. Do I know a ton about the “competition”? Nope. I don’t think it’s my job to do that, clients come to me and my firm for its Dynamics CRM expertise. There are plenty of others around that are totally hung up on the competition, that I don’t need to be. Competition truly makes us all strive for higher standards and I am one of those odd folks that really (really, seriously) like the challenge of it all. Would be boring if everyone did the same thing that I did. So I guess my takeaway from this one is own your specialty, make it your own, make it better than anyone else.
Now the whitepaper comment. I am addressing this one because my firm has participated in several of these on behalf of the Dynamics team. Is there really anyone out there that believes a whitepaper is much different than an extended marketing piece? Think about it…. overview, technical specs, use cases…..sounds like a bucket full of marketing to me.
The link below is a press release (a much shorter marketing tool than a whitepaper) about the study. Near the bottom is a link to the full report. Well, not actually a link to the report, a link to the page where you can purchase the report for $695.
There are some white papers or should I say research papers that are more neutral. Harvard Business Journal prides themselves on this factor, but we can't totally get away from the fact that writers have experience and opinions.
Perhaps one thought to apply when doing ones own research is what product is loved by the person I am talking with.
CRM is soooo personal and yet people can also learn and change. I loved Goldmine in the 1990s, Mastered Maximizer, ACT! and FileMaker in the 1998s - 2002s and jumped into Dynamics CRM in 2003.
Are there features that I wished were "canned" you bet. Are there unique bells that make me proud to work with the product? Definitely.
Is it really the product that those customers are rejecting or the marriage between business process and technology?
Posted by: Anne Stanton | June 30, 2009 at 06:56 AM