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Your Business Intelligence Vendor – A Partner or Problem?

Published: July 8, 2008

This article highlights why old sales tactics no longer work and how you can find a business intelligence vendor who is ready to be a partner, not a problem.

I was recently visiting a customer, discussing why they selected one vendor over another. I expected their reasons to be notable product differences like 64-bit processing, predictive analytics, Flash-powered dashboards. I was wrong. The deal clincher was less about the product and more about the sales tactics. With business intelligence (BI) vendors appearing increasingly similar on the surface, strategic differences like account management and relationships can tip the scales.

In this case, the winning vendor¹ was responsive, diligent and wanted to understand the customer’s challenges, both business and technical – a partner. The losing vendor was arrogant, unresponsive and disinterested in the project’s vision – a problem. Because a new CIO had used their BI product elsewhere, the losing salesman thought his deal was a sure thing. This salesman snubbed the IT group that was trying to build a world class BI solution and tried to sell directly to the business. Such sales tactics undermine IT’s efforts and put pressure on the already fragile business-IT relationship.

To be fair, in some organizations, IT is a barrier to business intelligence. They perceive themselves as the data guardians rather than as business enablers. The business-IT partnership is a constant battle; and when there is dysfunction, BI vendors naturally go to the people that have the budget (the business) and the BI vision (sometimes the business).

In this case, though, IT had both the budget and the vision, which they were trying to impart on the business. The losing BI vendor had no interest in partnering with the IT group for long-term BI success. He just wanted a quick sale and a commission.

Such a short-sighted sales approach is not an isolated incident. Customers lament the unprofessional sales tactics of some, the hyped-up demos that invariably lead to unmet expectations and the injustice of writing hefty maintenance checks when the account rep disappears after the sale.

And yet, there are those few account reps who truly partner with their customers. They want to understand their business challenges and work together to deploy business intelligence effectively. These account reps stick around past the initial sale, and customers credit both the product and the relationship for their BI success. This article highlights why old sales tactics no longer work and how you can find a BI vendor who is ready to be a partner, not a problem.

BI Buying in the Good Old Days

In the early days of business intelligence, selling to the business was a successful sales strategy. Business intelligence was typically deployed departmentally, and individual business units had the budget and authority to buy BI tools. Such tools might have been deployed to hundreds of users. These client/server-based BI tools could readily be installed and deployed by power users within the business.

Today, companies are increasingly taking an enterprise approach to business intelligence, deploying to thousands, internally and externally to customers and suppliers. In the 2007 Successful BI survey, approximately half describe their deployments as enterprise-wide and half departmental. While departmental deployments are still numerous, a survey I co-authored for TDWI in 2005 showed only 17% of BI deployments were enterprise-focused. This suggests significant momentum toward treating business intelligence as a strategic, enterprise asset. In analyzing success rates of BI initiatives, twice as many enterprise deployments were described as very successful compared to departmental deployments. (See Figure 1, according to survey results, 513 qualified responses, Successful Business Intelligence: Secrets to Making BI a Killer App.)

Enterprise business intelligence is somewhat of a chicken-and-egg situation. To deploy BI tools across the enterprise, they have to be enterprise-ready and affordable. BI tools have changed dramatically in the last few years, becoming web-enabled, with service-oriented architectures and leveraging things like LDAP or Active Directory for common authentication and metadata integration for ensuring consistent business terms. Monitoring features warn administrators before BI servers become overloaded. Business buyers rarely care about these features, and individual departments typically do not have the expertise to leverage them. When the BI tool lacks these capabilities, the BI vendor will want to sell to the business and systematically avoid the central IT group. Meanwhile, volume pricing and deploying centrally facilitate enterprise business intelligence. Repeatedly buying shelfware and duplicate capabilities from multiple BI vendors has significant cost implications.

The BI tools have changed in response to customer demands. BI selling should too.

Partnering with Your BI Vendor

Following are some practical suggestions for BI buyers in determining if your BI vendor is ready to partner.

Before the Sale

• Ask how long the salesperson has been with the vendor and in the BI industry. If you have a job-hopper, you may be better off buying the software from a consulting partner or systems integrator. While I have worked with clients who have complained about their BI account manager to higher ups, few have been successful in having them reappointed.
  
  
• Understand how much your salesperson knows your industry versus just the BI technology.
  
  
• Find out how the salesperson is incentivized. Many vendors pay commission only on product sold, which can lead you to wasting money on shelfware. A few vendors compensate their sales forces on customer satisfaction scores and frequency of contact with customers post sale.
  
  
• Set clear ground rules on engagement and be candid about who has the budget and will influence investment decisions. If you are an IT person and your business users are skeptical about business intelligence, leverage the sales expertise of the BI vendor in discussions with the business users.

After the Sale

• Schedule periodic conference calls or site visits to discuss progress, potential issues and product developments.
  
  
• Invite the salesperson or technical contact to your internal user group meetings to share best practices and to better understand how the BI tool is helping your business.
  
  
• While wining and dining should certainly not be able to influence buying decisions, informal social interaction can facilitate communication. Comments in a casual environment may ignite a greater understanding of your business needs or, conversely, new ways to deploy the product effectively. If you don’t like your BI account manager enough to talk to them anywhere other than across a negotiating table, then there’s little chance he or she will be of much help to you in selling business intelligence to the business or in ensuring a successful deployment.

BI tools are constantly changing with new versions, expanding product lines and innovations for existing and new classes of users. Customers are still exploring the myriad ways business intelligence can be applied to solve both the everyday and toughest business problems. With business intelligence in a state of constant motion, there needs to be a mind-set of partnership rather than a hit-and-run sales tactic.

Ultimately, BI buyers and salespeople want the same thing: for your deployment to be wildly successful (so you’ll buy more product and renew your maintenance contract). The difference is more in the vision and whether you’ve chosen a BI vendor that values long-term partnerships over short-term rewards.

End Notes:

1. Actual vendor names omitted as most have been guilty of shabby tactics to varying degrees and at varying times.

 

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