Emergence of a new culture

I am not sure when the transition happened but sometime in the recent decade the term partner replaced the vendor or provider. I think people went back to basics in the early part of the millennium driven by the slowdown, started focusing on leveraging existing ones and building new relationships. Business was tough to come and choices plenty which is where people made the difference. This subtle transition eased into our way of working and no one objected to the new reality.

Today we have partners providing total outsourcing, specialized domain specific or business process outsourcing, desk side support, apart from the various categories listed above. Many of these who have put in their heart and blood into delivering products/ services, irrespective of the contract or commercial arrangement, are truly partners to a CIO and the enterprise; my respects to them. We also have partners providing toner cartridges, USB sticks, printing paper where price is typically the determinant factor!

An opportunity wasted

Recently a CIO friend narrated a story where she met a new vendor where the discussion started with the intent that we would like to be your partners in success and not keep it transactional. The CEO and the team downward demonstrated high passion and commitment at the discussion table. They got engaged in a few projects as a precursor to what could be bigger things and achieve the status of a trusted partner. With many vying for the same business, it was seen as a prestigious win.

The slip between intent and execution has many horror stories spread across the industry. Senior teams from vendors attempt to build relationships with the CIOs, the sales team works with the domain specialists and the next level, and the delivery team which typically has no connect with the process starts discussions with the project managers and the users of the proposed solutions. And that is what transpired here too; one project was delivered well enough, the other killed the relationship.

What appeared to be a dream run became a moon race with surprises all through the journey! The initial effort estimates did not fit the project reality; either the team who did the initial study did not understand the complexity and expectations or her inputs were ignored in the proposal. So there was an attempt to restrict scope to fit the resources allotted. That upset everyone involved; the CEO made a visit, so did others involved in the initial discussion. Much water had flowed and a dam was essential.

Restoring some sanity to the project with the vendor CEO approving the additional investment and some hit on the CIO’s side too, the project looked like being back on track; but that was a false positive. The lack of trust made success elusive; the potential partnership gained adversarial tones with each pinning the blame on the other. It took some effort to bring everyone to a common understanding and move ahead.

What do you say, partner?

Partnership is built over a period of time and is a function of delivering to promise consistently across the layers. It takes effort to sustain it and requires investments and transparency from everyone. Everyone hates escalations which result due to lack of communication and assumptions. In my experience I have found partnerships that have stood the travails of time when there is no gap in expectations on both sides. Sales transactions do not build partnership, they only address tactical need.

It was a large deal that had every vendor wanting to show their wares with a hope of getting the business. The company had embarked on a major transformation after many years of hibernation. Thus there was a sense of expectation in the market and rightly so since whosoever bagged the order would become the standard supplier for a long time to come. The total business potential was very large commercially as well as from market visibility perspective.

For the vendor having discussed the architecture and the overall strategy with the IT team, the final stage to qualification was expected to be the meeting with the CIO. So the vendor pulled all plugs and brought together the best possible team for the presentation to the final decision maker. They knew that they had a chance of making the cut since the market leader had no presence as yet in this account. The CIO was also known to be fair in his approach and that added to the expectation.

The meeting started well with the setting of expectations and illustration of the approach, product features, open standards, and recent wins across industries. So far so good, but midway something broke and the fervent pitch turned awkward; rather than discussing merits of their product, approach and solution, the sales head started talking about the problems the CIO is likely to face if they selected the leader’s products. Now it was not about what they did but what the leader did not do.

It was not evident to them that they were no longer connected to the audience and had lost. The CIO patiently heard them out through the leader bashing; he proceeded to close the meeting with a polite remark that once the decision was finalized, it would be communicated to everyone who participated in the evaluation. As they left there was a sigh in the room; the CIO and team sat quietly trying to shrug off the negativity. Nothing needed to be said; everyone unanimously agreed that this was curtains.

Why do some people resort to negative selling? Why do they not sell on merit? Don’t they realize that it puts off the environment and has an adverse impact on the outcome? Is it the desperation of targets or month/ quarter/ year end, and the need to sell at any cost (ends justifying the means) that brings to fore such behaviors? Despite losing almost every such deal (I am sure CIOs can see through this clearly), the tendency remains to put down others to show superiority.

I believe that good is not always relative to something else where the other has to be proven not good. This maxim has to be understood for the behavior to change. A product or service can be classified superior by illustrating the benefits or features; let the recipient of the information decide in his/ her frame of reference whether it is a better fit than others. Everyone does not use the same yardstick neither does everyone compare the same products/ services every time. It would be great if our IT vendor community understands this and starts creating better services and products.

As a CIO I would love to do business with such a company, wouldn’t you?

A group of CIOs visited an international event hoping to learn from interactions with their global peers and gain different perspectives. While the IT vendor companies represented in the event were somewhat similar considering the global nature of the IT industry, the speakers were different providing a local flavor of the country. Majority of the sessions stressed on the same fact “the sun rises in the east”, I mean, “CIOs need to speak the language of the business”. They, however, presented in complex detail the technology solutions that they wanted the CIOs to buy.

Excuse me? Did we (the CIOs) miss something? No, we did not doze off during the presentation and neither did we see you skip some slides in your presentation which may have connected to the obvious fact. We were attentive and so was everyone until the tech stuff started. There were many messenger, text, and email messages flying in the room to check that we were all in hearing the same thing. Excusez-moi or should I say Entschuldigen Sie, maybe if you like I can try another language. But where is the connection? How many of the CIOs in the room were part of your sample size?

Over the years, IT was nudged, pushed and coerced to discard techno-speak in favor of what everyone else speaks in the enterprise; the quick compliance and transition surprised many and helped bridge the perception about individual and team capability. Projects were no longer about the next big technology or the latest versions of the fancy devices, they embodied holistic discussions around internal process and external customers. On the other hand for some reason the industry refuses to acknowledge the change continuing to cite examples of a shrinking minority of change averse IT leaders.

So how can this perception be changed? How do CIOs ensure that what they say is what the IT vendors and consultants hear? I believe that it is time to start challenging the well-wishing speakers to cite examples when they talk about the language course CIOs need and not hide behind the global research reports of named companies to justify their spiel. Can they speak more from personal experience? For them to be heard, maybe they need to talk business, unless this is a ploy to hide their inability to speak the new language of the CIO.

For the CIO, the sun indeed rises in the east, but maybe, just maybe, it needs to rise from the west for the vendors and consultants to notice that the CIO has passed the language course with flying colors. Maybe, it is the vendors and consultants, who need the course after all!

It was interesting to observe that the audience comprising largely of CEOs and heads of sales (or service), listened with rapt attention. It was eerie in a way — there was absolutely no cross-talk, buzzing of mobile phones, or anyone getting up during the hour long talk (I am used to, and also guilty of, such behavior during conferences). The audience could associate with most references to vendor behavior — their wins and losses, joys and frustrations, ups and downs. It was as if their lives were being subject to scrutiny, at a scale never done before.

On the flip side, the participants had many questions on why CIOs ignore them, and at the same time want the CEOs to visit even for a small transaction. According to many, the CIO egos were a big put off. There were also many questions around the lack of transparency in decision making, the inordinate negotiation timeframes, and then expectations of how the services, goods or solutions should be delivered in super crunch time.

As I made an attempt to answer some of these concerns, it was evident that the CIO’s evolution is still an ongoing process. Not every CIO has evolved to a level of maturity where almost every business transaction is a win-win situation (or every interaction is looked forward to). There are no universal answers that can be applied to every situation, since the CEOs agreed that there is a serious need to impart skills within their teams in order to more easily manage the situation.

Governance applied to IT procurement was another heatedly debated aspect. While vendors like to work with the CIO towards long-term relationships, being the lowest price vendor is not the best criteria for selection in such a scenario. According to the vendors, value additions offered as proof of concept, training and education, post implementation handholding, and technology advisory should be given due weight while taking a decision on awarding the business. The channel partners also expect clear decision making cycles, so that they do not end up in the hands of “purchase departments” who measure only on the basis of savings over the initial offer or budget.

The relationship between IT service providers, channel partners, and the CIO is at best, symbiotic. We need each other to be successful, in our quest for achieving our objectives. A partnership built on shaky ground will not withstand the travails of time and pressure from internal as well as external forces. Trust has to be built upfront and sustained, for each others’ success. To quote my favorite management thinker (at least in 2010), “The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself” – Peter Drucker.

As the IT service providers and channel partners evolve to understand their customers, the industry in which they work, the opportunities open to their customers, and work towards creating success for the CIO, it will be a challenge for some CIOs to now engage with them at a new plane of maturity and understanding. It the CIOs fail to achieve this, they may alienate themselves into a situation that will make success difficult.

Are CIOs up to the challenge? It still remains to be seen.

Last month, I was invited to a a marquee publication house’s three day offsite CIO event to discuss the coming year’s IT agenda. Topics on the agenda looked good, the attendee list was glowing, and a long standing relationship with the Editor propelled me towards attending this event. So I packed my bags and decided to give it a shot.

Almost all such events invite a couple of CEOs and thought leaders to share their insights and provoke some thought within the audience. And the CEOs did not let down on that promise. They had the audience eating out of their hands, listening with rapt attention to every word, absorbing it, taking notes, discussing with their neighbors, and in the end asking a lot of relevant questions. The act was a tough one to follow, but the CIOs were charged.

As a result, they (the CIOs) did not mind a few vendor presentations. To their credit, the CIOs did attempt to follow these sessions, but it was a difficult proposition to keep the lids from drooping.

The following days had everyone unanimously wondering what hit them. The torture began with inane presentations ranging from the usual suspects — virtualization, green data centers, cloud computing, outsourcing, intelligent cabling systems, network rationalization, and so on. A few consultants tried to revive the audience by raising questions about CIO reporting and their efficacy. The audience was too numbed to be provoked, and let it go with a mild reprimand similar to “Don’t disturb my sleep”.

The icing on the cake was a presentation on “What is a Data Center”. Yes, men are from Mars, and in a predominantly male crowd, by association CIOs could be classified to belong to Mars. But telling a CIO about what a data center is like is rather akin to teaching Michael Schumacher how to ride a car! I wanted to insert an analogy on Golf, but decided against it.

Without exception, every sponsor had a slide deck (with a minimum of 30 slides) to be displayed to the captives. They ranged right from very basic elementary stuff and all the way to one which wanted CIOs to learn how to move virtual partitions across servers. To be subject to such a score of presentations over two days beats the torture that even the famed Nazi inflicted on their poor captives.

Despite being advised against it by the organizers and post event feedback by the audience, it beats me as to why vendors insist on subjecting CIOs to repetitive presentations with nothing new to talk about, and preach their version of religion. To top it all, these activities are dished out by sales and marketing folks, who are not even subject matter experts (these people could potentially be challenged by the listeners).

The last straw (in a few cases) is the substitute junior staff member reading out slides with no eye contact with the audience. Such a person is typically in a hurry to get off the stage in order to avoid any cross-questioning from the few members who suffer from insomnia. I would rather withdraw the slot than be the subject of “How to reduce your exposure to this vendor”.

Has the IT vendor become a slave to these habits? Has their thinking has become clouded (a side effect of cloud computing?)? Is the scene so bad that IT vendors are unable to explore alternatives to engage their prime customers — the CIOs? Whatever happened to good old case studies, panel discussions, and interactive sessions in the form of a Q&A? Are vendors unable to stand tall without the crutches of slide decks which no one wants to see? Why do vendors continue to alienate themselves from their customers?

I guess it’s time to get back to basics. To quote Peter Drucker once again, “The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself.” Will a publishing house donate some Peter Drucker books to all the Marketing Heads of IT companies?