One for the vendors
When you work with technology in higher education, outsourcing is inevitable. Colleges shouldn’t focus their energy and resources on creating and maintain technology infrastructure when it’s both easier and more cost-effective to outsource it. And so working with vendors also becomes inevitable.
Typically, I view vendors as less than trustworthy - you want my money and your salespeople will attempt to fill my head with delusions of grandeur to get it. I’m on to your game. So don’t give me a sales pitch. When I begin communications with a vendor I’m considering, what I really want are two things:
1) I want a product that focuses on meeting my needs rather than bonus features that I won’t really use.
2) I want phenomenal customer service.
These seem like the most basic components of any business but sadly they are also some of the most overlooked. Nowadays it seems like companies are more interested in building their brand than really focusing on creating and maintaining a phenomenal product. They forget that their product - not their CEO or their blog or their newsletter or their twitter account - IS the brand. If your product sucks compared to the competition (or even if its at the top of the pack but still sucks anyway), than all the branding in the world can’t fix it. So forget spending time presenting at conferences to try to build your name - focus that energy on building a great tool. That’s what really draws me in and gets me to stay.
Customer service is almost more important to me. I can deal with a product that has a flaw or two if the service is there. Why? Because with great customer service, I know that I can go to them with flaws and they will be fixed in a future release. Companies focused on the needs of their users are always refining and enhancing their product so it evolves with both their needs and with industry best practices. Or how about a CEO and a CTO of a company getting on the phone for a conference call with prospective clients while in their car on a trip somewhere? That shows me dedication to customer service.
A kick ass product and killer customer service. Am I asking too much? Sometimes, it seems like it.
October 29th, 2008
I think you are asking a lot because the dirty little secret from the technology perspective is that most of what higher ed would purchase is relatively easy to make… unless you require certain things surrounding IT governance. It is likely the investment in the long run from the organizations perspective just isn’t there but that depends on the product.
The reality is that the Microsofts, the Oracles, the SAP’s of the world are very hard to compete with. The vendor you are dealing with could be hoping to build their brand enough to get sold to the big fish inside of 24-60 months. Some aren’t but most really are… that is the tech industry.
If you are dealing with the Microsofts, the Oracles, and the SAP’s you will not get to talk to the CEO or CTO. Higher ed are very small customers unless you are talking multi-million dollar campus wide initiatives. That is different.
Yes I generalize a bit but the tech industry is largely a group of extremely talented people that make most ideas a reality in a very short time. They aren’t robust but they are good enough to sell to people… until you deal with a very large company that can afford the engineering processes to make a solid, reliable product.
October 29th, 2008
Hi Jesse,
Respectfully, I disagree with a lot of what you’re saying. If higher ed technology was easy to make, then the companies out there would do a hell of a lot better with their product than they are right now. I could name names, but I won’t.
Also, I think we may be talking about different things - I’m saying technology infrastructure in this case to refer to things like CRM tools, mass email tools….things like that. Things used for marketing where an in-house solution would be the worst way to dedicate time and resources.
BTW, the example with the CEO and the CTO calling us from their car was a real example, so clearly some companies do take that level of time. So no, I don’t think I’m asking too much and the attitude that I am is the one that allows companies to feel its OK to offer crappy service. If you are taking my money, I don’t care if I’m your smallest customer or your largest - I want to feel valued because I can easily take my business elsewhere.
October 29th, 2008
They won’t “do a hell of a lot better” because that isn’t where the return is for them. I have worked with many companies that target higher ed and their motivations from the technology vs marketing perspective are really out of whack. That includes large and small companies.
I have studied web based technologies (both grad and otherwise) for years and been in the business for around ten years now. CRM is easy, mass email is easy, and I did put the qualifier of ‘relatively’ on my original statement.
On a much too rare occasion a company will take the time for senior management to give you a call but not a large company unless you are spending over 100K or there is potential for that value.
There are of course exceptions but if you give me a problem that you want solved by web based technology and a team of about 6 talented people and I can have it for you in under 6 months. Unless you want a piece of technology that is patented… that complicates things. But if you want what is largely glorified database/data mining operations (that is email, CRM, even IMS) then it can be built. If want a uni committee to oversee the development and technology… 6 years.
Now should higher ed have in house dev unit dedicated to that kind of rapid dev/deployment? I certainly think so in certain cases but that is because I am on one in higher ed
October 29th, 2008
“They won’t “do a hell of a lot better” because that isn’t where the return is for them.”
I really suggest that you read about marketing, because as soon as you start insulting your customers by saying their business isn’t important to you, your business is in some trouble.
“I have worked with many companies that target higher ed and their motivations from the technology vs marketing perspective are really out of whack.”
You need to expand on that because that really doesn’t tell me much of anything.
“I have studied web based technologies (both grad and otherwise) for years and been in the business for around ten years now. CRM is easy, mass email is easy, and I did put the qualifier of ‘relatively’ on my original statement.”
Good for you, though I don’t think I asked for your resume. If its easy, then why do most companies suck at it? If its so easy, then why has no one company really captured the higher ed market?
“On a much too rare occasion a company will take the time for senior management to give you a call but not a large company unless you are spending over 100K or there is potential for that value.”
Funny, because I’ve spoken to senior management with almost all the vendors I’ve ever worked with. And yes, some of them are small company but they also pull in huge profits because :::gasp::: they have kick ass customer service which garners them a huge customer base.
“There are of course exceptions but if you give me a problem that you want solved by web based technology and a team of about 6 talented people and I can have it for you in under 6 months.”
Wrong. Because no problem is ever over and done with in six months. Additionally, it costs more to do that in-house than it does to outsource. How much does it cost an organization to hire “6 talented people”, with salary plus benefits? Let’s lowball it and say $300,000/year. That’s just salary and benefits and doesn’t include the cost of training, which averages out to an additional $60,000 cost per person to an institution, on average. Do you really think that I can’t find an outsourced solution that is probably better than the one 6 people would half-ass in six months for a lot less than $300,000? Right now I’m paying $15,000 to outsource the delivery of my email for a year. Yeah, I think I’ll stick with my vendor on that one.
“Now should higher ed have in house dev unit dedicated to that kind of rapid dev/deployment? I certainly think so in certain cases but that is because I am on one in higher ed”
I think I just outlined pretty clearly why they shouldn’t. It’s too costly and it forces the institution to dedicate resources to things that are way outside its primary mission of education students. Outsourcing isn’t a bad thing from both a business and a marketing prospective, though IT folks do tend to disagree with me on it.
October 29th, 2008
Oh hai, sorry to interrupt.
Karyln is right.
6 months to build a web solution to any problem is hubris beyond the pale. Even if your team of ninjas could build parity with commercial vendors’ multiple year efforts in 1/5 the time, it would not make sense economically. Much better to spread the dev cost over 100 schools. Even with profit on top, the school still comes out ahead.
Karlyn, as soon as our product stops sucking (meaning we substantially crack the code on student apathy in an interface) I’ll be happy to talk to you from a car. Then we can talk marketing : )
October 29th, 2008
I don’t totally disagree with you on outsourcing… I suppose I just don’t agree that certain things should be outsourced… and ya that post was trollingly vague.
Your $300 000/year isn’t just for your $15 000 a year solution and it shouldn’t exist if you don’t have a need for more than $300K of solutions. My team is currently working on a $5-10 Million problem that will take a couple years to move to the ongoing dev stage. It has elements of mass emailing, CRM, and CMS but there is no product that does what we need so we have to build or pay someone to build it (and the estimate is over $5 mil over 5 years).
Our development process and long term plan assumes the application will continue to evolve as needs change and we are building with that in mind. The application is a core product of our mission here, manage the co-operative education process which involves currently over 15K students and thousands of employers ranging from Microsoft, RIM, Apple, Amazon, Google, Toyota, to government jobs, and small start-ups etc.
To stick with the original topic (tangent is my fault), you are still asking a lot from companies that are looking for a user base and an exit rather than a long term presence in the higher ed space. That is been my experience with the founders of the companies that have made bundles and then vanish. Look who is left in the CMS space, who is gone, who was sold, and who is now entering it. Email marketing is the current thing… it is relatively easy to do which is why there are a lot of vendors. Three or four will be brilliant but many will be akin to Viagra sales folks that have been doing it for years. You aren’t going to easily find great customer service though… if the technology is simple it is far more likely there are more people in it for a fast buck then to build a company.
October 29th, 2008
“Your $300 000/year isn’t just for your $15 000 a year solution and it shouldn’t exist if you don’t have a need for more than $300K of solutions.”
Exactly. And most schools, frankly, don’t need that many developers on staff because its cheaper to outsource all the needs separately. You have to admit that to build and maintain the same thing as my cheap $15k solution (which brings in an average ROI of about 10,000% BTW) would cost much more in in-house staff hours than it does for me to just outsource it. Same holds true for most other things.
” It has elements of mass emailing, CRM, and CMS but there is no product that does what we need so we have to build or pay someone to build it”
Frankly, if your attitude about these things is that they are easy, than I’m scared to see what you’re developing because there are a lot of products out there that do what you’re talking about and still suck.
” you are still asking a lot from companies that are looking for a user base and an exit rather than a long term presence in the higher ed space.”
No I’m not. If you’re going to take my money, I want customer service. Period, end of conversation. If I can’t get it from you, I will go elsewhere. I’ve left more than one vendor in my career because they didn’t provide me with the level of service I wanted and it was always the right decision.
” Email marketing is the current thing… it is relatively easy to do which is why there are a lot of vendors.”
Again, if its so easy to do, then why do most tools suck? I’ve demoed more tools than I can even name. 99% of them are god awful.
October 29th, 2008
“Again, if its so easy to do, then why do most tools suck? I’ve demoed more tools than I can even name. 99% of them are god awful.”
They suck because they are easy to do… There is little motivation to spend the money on making it suck less. Although that doesn’t explain Sharpoint which just sucks because it sucks.
October 29th, 2008
“There is little motivation to spend the money on making it suck less.”
Based on this statement alone, I will put a significant wagger on the fact that the thing you’re developing will fail. You just posted publicly that you’re neither interesting in customer service nor in developing a kick ass product. Why even bother?
October 29th, 2008
I think I said that the 99% of things you demo’d suck because the companies that build them don’t have motivation to make suck less. That could be because they are easy to build solutions and the initial investment was low. For the moment their return in high. There is no justification to build customer service or a better product when the crap they are peddling is selling. Their exit strategy is either consulting, selling, or profit taking… or something else. Few are building empires in simple stuff.
I was speaking from experience with vendors and certainly not stating what I believe. In many ways I agree with you. Those that execute the best are most likely to succeed. Customer service and a kick ass product is part of great execution. What I don’t totally agree with is:
“You have to admit that to build and maintain the same thing as my cheap $15k solution (which brings in an average ROI of about 10,000% BTW) would cost much more in in-house staff hours than it does for me to just outsource it.”
If you are gaining that kind of ROI, why not invest more? What are the spin off benefits of investing more into the solution? How can use those resources to enhance the institutional goals directly and indirectly?
October 29th, 2008
“Few are building empires in simple stuff.”
37 Signals is doing pretty well.
“If you are gaining that kind of ROI, why not invest more? ”
Because I don’t have to invest more in infrastructure to accomplish my goal. The $15K is just the infrastructure. That’s not where the real value is created - that comes from the marketing strategy.
October 29th, 2008
I have to agree with Karlyn on this. As a “consumer” of technology, we are constantly balancing what we can accomplish with in-house staff and what would be better accomplished by out-sourcing. This is exacerbated by the difficulty in hiring talented staff.
For many of the processes that we are trying to set in place, there is no perfect solution (One reason there are so many choices in vendors) *but* we definitely put a huge value on customer service. We even try to build that factor into our evaluation of products. Problems in service will also kill any chance in continuation of a contract.
October 30th, 2008
Hi Karlyn,
I’m going to approach this from the ‘vendor’ side of the table.
Sadly, there are lots of folks out there that do have sales roles where they are tasked with getting you to part with your money. Luckily, they are pretty easy to identify!
Here are two easy things to flag a vendor as one of those guys:
He/She spends more time talking than listening
He/She offers you a solution before understanding your problem
Now that I’ve allocated blame to a group of sales people, I’d like to turn the tables. Working with a vendor is just that….a relationship that requires communication to identify an issue, identify a solution, and make recommendations.
This requires communicating with the vendor. See a previous post of mine to get my input on this..
http://keepingontop.azorus.com/2008/08/11/weekly-discussion-when-options-seem-endless/
As you put it, your first requirement is to get information about a product or service that meets your needs. That sounds great! However, quite often, I get people calling me and pretty much the first question they ask is “how much?”. That makes is exceptionally difficult to ascertain if my product/service is going to be a solution for you at all. If you treat all vendors like they have a cookie-cutter product, you run the risk of being treated like a cookie-cutter-customer.
If you want to discuss with a vendor his or her product offering, you have to be prepared to discuss why you believe you need it. Now, I do realize that the ’sales-predators’ that you fear will chew up your valuable time; sadly that won’t ever go away! For those guys, let them go!
When you get someone who asks a lot of questions, give answers! While the dialogue may be longer than you might like, the benefit is that if a vendor properly understands your situation, and DOES have a service that fits your need, the good news is that a lot of the work that is required to ’spec’ your project has already been done.
With something as complicated as a recruitment CRM (as we provide), you may be amazed that people expect me to accurately describe our capabilities by ticking off check-boxes. Then again..that might not be a shock at all. It becomes obvious at that point that someone is shopping for features and lowest price; not a solution!
As I said in the post I referred to earlier, “If the vendor isn’t interested in hearing YOUR story, they aren’t interested in helping you write the ending.” In addition, if you’re not interested in sharing your story, are you really trying to find a solution?
Oh…and I didn’t forget - customer service is paramount, but for us is simply commonplace. ALL vendors should realize that their ONLY success is that of their clients! By making clients successful, you’ll make yourself successful!
October 31st, 2008
Hi Toby,
I think you make some really important points. It is a two-way street and its really important for both sides to (a) understand the needs/goals of the client and (b) communicate throughout the process to make sure those needs/goals are met.
Thanks for your prospective!
K