Do you have one big message ?

Earlier this month, I was in a conference of retailers discussing how IT can contribute to growth within their business and to the industry at large. The event had its usual bevy of IT vendors who had availed of speaking slots as well as many deciding to exhibit their products/solutions to target potential customers with their offerings. Attendance being large with representation across retailers, it was a great opportunity for the sponsors to engage.

Now this was one conference that was crafted together by a panel of CIOs and vendor representatives in conjunction with an industry body. The panel engaged with the sponsors through the planning process defining expectations and providing the suggested format of their participation in the event. Vendors presenting the traditional way using slides were expected to send their presentation to the Committee of CIOs to validate the context aligned to the theme and to ensure that it made sense to the participants. Thus, the agenda, content headlines and topics (de-jargonized by the CIOs with some catchy titles) were fairly relevant to the audience comprising of a mix of business and IT representatives across the layers of management.

Every marketing executive when provided with the opportunity to deliver an address to a captive audience attempts to put in everything that the company does whether it makes sense to the target audience. The result is that anyone listening is more confused than s/he was prior to sitting through the presentation. Charts and multiple boxes with bullet points are the norm. Animations and pictures add to the already crowded slides.

With a few exceptions, the changes to the pitch comprised of slashing the number of slides to fewer than 20 and making them readable even to people sitting in the back of the room. The clear message to everyone was what is the one big message you want to leave with the audience in your allotted 30 minutes ? Can you engage and provoke thought rather than outline the menu of options your company has to offer ? Given the task of reviewing 3 presentations each and ensuring that the changes are in line with expectations, the CIOs were a harried lot by the time they got into the conference. Few still escaped censorship by either citing unavailability of global speaker slides or by simply not responding.

The end result ? Few chose the case study route to deliver the benefits of their product or services; the compliant presentations created a wow for almost everyone, visible from the crowd outside their stalls. Vendors who did their own thing found the audience twiddling with their smartphones, chatting to their neighbours, dozing off, or simply walking out midway. If I was the speaker, it would be totally demoralizing for me.

In the day end debrief with one such vendor, he insisted that there is no other way to inform the audience of what his company has to offer. If the customer is not aware of the entire spectrum of offerings, how and why will s/he think about his company ? According to him, when he puts across 10 points, a few will be remembered. He refused to believe that his speech was delivered but not received.

Sigh ! some people don’t learn.

Why do vendors sponsor CIO events ?

It is a general belief that CIOs are a pampered lot, with every vendor equipped with a marketing budget vying for time of the CIO wining and dining them, or taking them to exotic locales under the aegis of a larger event organized by, say an IT publication. A destination’s lure or the fine dining opportunity is what the vendors believe attracts their audience to accept these invitations.

Now, the CIO is usually attracted by headlines promising to transform the business, strategies to enhance business value, getting ahead of competition or additions to the corporate bottom line, to just name a few juicy titles. It does not matter what product or service the IT company offers the titles are very similar in their stated intent to help the CIO in being a winner. Expectation mismatch?

The reality is more on the lines of a captive audience, subjected to what can be described as Auschwitz style torture by presenting presumptuous facts of a micro-segmented market that has no correlation to the reality (of the audience). They then propose the same old solutions around data centers, storage and server virtualization, wrapped on cloud computing enabling the business statements using logic defying rationale.

Recent times have seen the gas chamber (read conference room) pumped with cloudy trends and solutions suffocating CIO prisoners and adding to the confusion. The CIOs’ silent cries are lost in the din of the collar-mike-d speaker who avoids eye contact with the victims, so as to not be cursed by their souls. Sighs escaping occasionally are drowned by the amplified voice of the person standing a head above the rest (on the stage). Basic decency and courtesy prevents the CIOs from walking out; a few regularly pass out, even as their snoring disturbs those who seek solace.

This cycle repeats endlessly, with the CIOs hoping in vain that IT vendors have probably taken their last feedback. That they have changed their way of using the precious face time with a group of decision makers. But no, it is as if the basic principles of customer engagement have been thrown to the winds. Forget the customer or his needs, sell what you have; it does not matter whether the customer needs it or not. Twist the message adequately to make the square peg fit into a round hole.

The vendors’ defense is typically on the lines of, “Listen to the customer? How can I do that when I have only 45 minutes of stage time? I have to tell them my story (the story that my company wants to propagate). I will read the slides, take a few minutes longer than the allotted time, so that there is no time for questions”. After all, I have spent some hard money to sponsor the event.

Over the last year or so, many CIOs have started excusing themselves from these excursions and invitations, in many cases at the last minute, citing business exigencies. This number is growing, and such opportunities will just wither away unless the model changes to encompass “Engagement, Listening, and Empathy”.

Is anyone listening?

Strategic vendor meetings, slip between intent and execution

I met the CEO of a global market leading hardware and services vendor recently – he’s from an organization which has been engaged with us for many years. He was earnestly seeking customer feedback on how is his company contributes to the success of customers and what is required to sustain or improve the mutual value. My submission to him was that all is well and hunky dory; we think of their company when we needed something. Once the transaction is over, the Account Manager as well as my team part ways until the next requirement comes up.

As a purely transactional arrangement, this works well, but many other value added opportunities get missed as this vendor is not our first recall. The CEO was aghast and promised to remedy the situation quickly through a strategic meeting with solution heads and domain experts; this was to be repeated every quarter, or on demand.

Six months passed, and nothing happened. Another chance meeting, and this time the CEO turned crimson on hearing the progress. In the interim, some more business went to their competitors. The chastised managers began the chase attempting to fix this meeting, which materialized after another three weeks. Time requested and granted — 1½ hours, scheduled start 2:30 PM.

D-day arrived, and this is how events unfolded:

2:30 PM came and went with no sign of the delegation; No call, no SMS, nothing. The audience comprising of the CIO and a few General Managers waited with some concern and amusement.

3:00 PM: Account Manager turns up. After 10 minutes, the second person ambles along. Meeting starts at 3:15 with a presentation on how the vendor sees the current market. They shared their beliefs about our challenges, and thus the opportunities for engagement. He talked about services that we have tried unsuccessfully with the vendor as the key unique selling points.

3:30 PM: The Sales head joins the meeting while the discussion was on an organizational matrix—a model that would support us in the collective quest to take engagement to the next level. As we started tabling issues, the vendor team had reasons for all that had nothing to do with them. An ERP upgrade, change in account managers, shift of support personnel, I am sure you get the point. But there were only fleeting regrets that they did not update us on open issues or orders despite multiple reminders.

3:45 PM: “What are your priorities and projects for the next 12 months?” and we quipped “To explore new and alternative vendors”. My colleague whispers that this meeting is worth a mention on Oh I See. Saving grace for them came in the form of an urgent phone interruption.

4:00 PM: The reception announces arrival of the last person who was to join the meeting. I get up and walk out of the meeting.

I wonder whether the vendor realizes what they (did not) achieve with the strategic meeting scheduled by their CEO with intent to enhance business with our company. Why does the IT vendor fraternity not teach its sales force to listen, engage, empathize and show some patience – the four tenets of retaining your customers? All of them (except a handful) are interested in talking, or presenting the great slides provided by their local or global HQ with inane survey data that normally has no connect in the local dynamics of business. Like every other business, retaining customers is all about creating a differentiated experience, unless you always compete on price.

Food for thought or snack gone bad: Data centers drive business agility

In the recent past, I attended a few seminars conducted by large IT solution providers with a tantalizing subject line, “How to achieve business agility” (or something on similar lines). The invite’s text appeared to offer a ready-to-eat snack with all the good tidings of fruits, fresh vegetables, salads, and everything that’s healthy. Since it sounded like the formula for fitness in a week so, CIOs obviously turned up in large numbers—only to realize the old adage that if it’s too good to be true, it probably is.

Almost all the organizers wanted to focus on how to improve data center efficiency, utilization, management and agility in provisioning new servers. According to all of them (without exception), the delay in provisioning a new server can lead to compromises in business agility, thereby adversely impacting the outcomes. Each vendor’s formula for success revolved around their solution for virtualization and (or) management tools, which allow quicker provisioning of virtual machines—allowing the IT organization to bring up a new application within hours, as compared to the days when physical servers were in vogue.

I find this unpalatable, as it presupposes that everyone in the IT organization is only focusing on the infrastructure, with no communication with the team members who create or buy applications. Or that we have a scenario where the applications team does not tell the infrastructure team until the last minute that they require some compute and storage resources to deploy their test, development, or production environments. The assumption is that the two factions are not on the same page on projects or timelines, which results in delay.

Agreed that virtual machines can be provisioned quicker than physical machines—CIOs will also agree with this, but that’s only part of the story. If not enabled with policy, it can also lead to innumerable virtual machines (with limited or no use), thereby blocking resources and creating inefficiency. Virtualization continues to remain at the periphery of deployment, with core and large package providers as yet to certify their applications on virtual servers.

Typically, IT organizations are more organized in nature, with visibility of planned deployments and requirements of licenses or hardware. Dependencies are well known, and irrespective of the physical or virtual environment that the enterprise may prefer, this is rarely a cause of delay (or lack of agility).

In my observation, project delays are more to do with scope creep, signoffs or even indifference from business. It’s a subject that deserves a longer discussion on another day.
So has the data center become the cause of business angst? Well, I’ve never heard of such a scenario in the recent (nor the distant) past!

Coming back to the event under discussion, presenters sheepishly agreed to counterviews from the attending CIOs, and attempted to justify their stance by stating that their global research data had indeed given them such insights. Talk about assumptions!

My view is that vendors should refrain from such titillating titles to attract the audience. At the end of the day, vendors end up with the realization that most participants badly want to leave. The CIOs stay back only out of sheer decency and respect. As a result, vendors run the risk of alienating their key customers by continuing this play of words.

Coming back to the ready-to-eat snack, it was stale, oily and very unhealthy—causing heartburn and acidity. Most of the CIOs required gallons of liquor to drown the symptoms of disbelief and utter boredom.

(IT) Security and the CIO

Last month, many CIOs (including me) were subject to a barrage of security events—as if the world suddenly needed a lot more protection than it had in the past! CEOs, senior vice presidents and thought leaders suddenly seem to have descended upon the CIO, challenging the security postures of enterprises.

Questions challenging the efficacy of currently deployed solutions were very similar across almost all vendors. Many data points from a multitude of surveys were bandied around in an attempt to make CIOs succumb to the FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt) factor.

A typical session begins with “Top 5 technology priorities”, and since the presentation was being made by security vendors, IT security figured prominently in these lists. To the hapless CIO, statistics reveal a scary world full of crackers and nefarious elements (who want to take away customer data, send spam, phish users, attack end computing devices, and sniff network traffic). It did not matter if the audience agrees with these or not. Irrespective of whether the displayed data is from the same geography or industry, the ground is set for discourses on why your enterprise is not secure if it hasn’t deployed the specific vendors’ solutions.

Almost all cases are built upon the premise that data is only stored electronically, and leakage can only happen in electronic forms. The exercise of data classification is touted as the starting point—except that beyond a point, this classification becomes irrelevant, as the imposed controls make conducting business a painful task. Mobile workers appear as the villains who will lose a laptop or connect to unsecured wireless networks compromising valuable data.

Yet another cry is a ban on social media. This does not acknowledge the fact that business also uses these channels for connecting with customers. The mantra is “you cannot trust these gullible ignorant employees, they are the weakest link”.

Yes, people are indeed the weakest link in security compromises; but they can also be the strongest. The biggest tenet of any business operation is trust. If the enterprise cannot trust its employees to be prudent in their usage of various communication modes or protect the data that matters, then I don’t believe that a technology solution is the answer.

Information security can be effective with help of education, continuous reinforcement by the management, a “zero tolerance” policy towards adverse incidents, periodic reviews, and finally the technology stack which is dependent on the business operations. Exception management is fraught with danger, and should be aggressively discouraged. Many mature organizations have found that making an example of truant employees enhances levels of security, and builds trust with customers in the long run. Attempts to hush such cases, or not taking strict action which may already be defined in the policy sends a message of tolerance, which can significantly compromise the enterprise.

Vendors need to listen as they engage (see Irrelevance of vendor presentations) the CIO in discussions on how they can help their customers in sustaining and improving their information security postures. This has to be based on an assessment, and not based on inane survey data that may be far removed from reality for the audience. Else, they face the risk of alienation from their prime customer, the CIO.

Flood of invites, Tsunami of events, and a drowning CIO

It is fairly evident that the economy’s achieved a turnaround. Most key indicators (including inflation) are heading north. The IT industry is also seeing an upswing, and increased spending from customers. So vendors are now back with fresh marketing budgets. In their endeavor to woo CIOs, the number of seminars, events, offsite workshops and entertainment has suddenly increased manifold.

Levels of noise have reached such a crescendo that if the CIO were to accept every invite that came his way, he’d probably spend a couple of days every month at work. To add to this, the assorted freebies and writing instruments given away at each such a gathering would fill up available office space.

The question is, are there no other ways to engage the IT decision makers?

Typical event invites have eye catching headlines interspersed with buzz words like “Cloud Computing” or “Green” (the hot favorites for now), which is enough to entice the CIO’s participation. The content has rarely any connection to these across most events. However, since there still remains fuzziness about interpretation of these, the poor IT Heads end up hoping to gain some insights about what these really mean for them in real life. The cycle continues with almost every vendor, irrespective of whether they are software players, hardware vendors or just service providers. Another noticeable trend has been to couch the topic in business terms like “Agility” or “Profitable Growth”. CIOs start wondering if they would miss some key trend, and again end up disillusioned within the first hour.

Most events are scheduled for the evening, and start with a technology discourse—supposed to be presented by a thought leader. Poor last minute substitutions are becoming the norm (unavoidable circumstances, reminds me of the “technical glitch” with airlines), with a Sales or Marketing person who ends up reading through the presentation. This is followed by the panel discussion with a set of clueless speakers.

A frustrated audience sits through the ordeal out of sheer decency. A few end up catching up on email or leave with their cell phones glued to their ear, citing exigencies that need their attention. Those who do stay until the end find the networking damp, the time spent a sheer waste, and promise themselves not to attend another event.

Give us a break—respect the CIO!

Marketing budgets thus spent rarely provide value to the IT companies. I believe that the IT industry needs to evaluate ROI models used while planning such forays. While I agree about the need to engage decision makers in discussion and dialogue, other alternatives can be used with greater efficacy. Unearth real life business problems, and explore how the offered solution can practically solve it. Use case studies, customer speak, and focused discussion around the issue.
Don’t get upset when 10% of confirmations turn up for the event; ‘regrets’ are the enlightened ones who have suffered similar gatherings. The ‘no shows’ have probably spoken to CIOs who declined your requests, or found another interesting venue (at the courtesy of a different IT vendor).

So consider accepting substitutions from the next layer of participating IT personnel. These participants are more likely to engage in a technical discussion than the CIO. But this will not happen for too long, since they’ll also evolve towards becoming business savvy, and get flooded with invites.

Irrelevance of vendor presentations

Let me start with a quote from Peter Drucker — “There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.”

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?