Blog: Craig Schiff

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Entrenched, But Not Embraced

It used to be that if a vendor was providing the software for a particular solution area in a company, when that solution was expanded that vendor would be the first to be called. In the world of BPM today that is not always the case. More often than not the existing vendor does not get the new business by default. A selection process will take place where that vendor becomes one of 4 or 5 solutions being evaluated. In some instances, and this is a growing trend, the entrenched vendor is specifically excluded from the options being looked at for expanding the solution. This seems to go against common logic: people are already trained up on the solution, there is probably a good pricing deal in place for purchasing incremental seats/functionality, etc. And yet the entrenched vendors are not being invited to play. Why is this the case?

In the world of BPM the typical situation is a departmental system going corporate-wide or adding additional components (i.e. you have budgeting, now you want to add a dashboard, or consolidation, etc.). What we are finding is that the people who are using the existing systems are not standing up and advocating on their behalf when expansion is being considered. In some cases they are even recommending against considering that vendor. The primary reason comes down to the fact that they have had some sort of negative experience with the vendor and/or product - oversold on functionality, took longer/cost more to implement, harder to use than expected. While this can happen with any application, the highly aggressive sales and marketing that has been taking place in the BPM space is beginning to come back and bite those that engaged in it. This, coupled with the fact that the vendors that are being considered now as alternatives are themselves pouring on the marketing hype helps set up this situation. In other words, you know you have had issues with the existing system, the new ones you are looking at (or more specifically, that are being marketed to you) seem great by comparison. Of course this also makes it highly likely that this cycle will repeat the next time the system is expanded.

What does this mean to the vendors, customers, and the BPM industry? Where will this all end? For most of the vendors it means opportunity. Just because someone (usually one of the big guys) has a foothold at a company, it doesn't mean they will win the business when the system is expanded. There is also the opportunity to be the vendor that tells it like it really is and win repeat business. To the customers it means they must do more due diligence. Just because the vendor, or his implementation partner, or his best references, say the system is great it doesn't necessarily mean it will be great for you. For the industry it should be a wake-up call. If the vendors don't get back to more realistic solution selling and/or the customers don't do a better job of evaluating products, then there is the risk of BPM joining the ranks of great 3 letter acronym solutions that failed to live up to expectations.

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