Enterprise Readiness Keeps Success within Your Sights
Enterprise Readiness Keeps Success within Your Sights
The main reason behind these downward spirals is lack of enterprise readiness. In the beginning, a solution starts as a prototype or is acquired. At this stage, most people settle for just getting the technology up and running with bare bones functionality. This strategy gets them to market faster, but does not set them up to succeed long term.
Successful companies understand enterprise readiness. It is more than just building a set of product requirements. It is a combination of including requirements within the product and presenting these features to the customer in a way that instills confidence they require before purchasing your solution.
This understanding allows companies to set themselves up to succeed. First, they build their initial release so they can attain enterprise readiness within 12-18 months. This allows them to achieve their financial goals of sustainability. Then, they will structure their organization to provide the services enterprise customers will require to support and implement the solution.
Companies who do not adequately understand enterprise readiness fall subject to major delays and complications that keep them from attaining their goal. Lack of planning often causes companies to have to rewrite or re-architect major chunks of their solution. In most cases, these are major projects requiring several man-months in effort. Depending on the solution, these rewrites introduce complications around upgrades and migrations, as well.
When a rewrite is demanded (even if it is demanded by the market) a company’s management begins to show what they are made of. They need to quickly decide and prioritize doing these projects. In general, management teams struggle allocating resources for projects which do not gain them new functionality. They cannot drown out the constant screams of customers demanding more features. So, management teams easily fall into a state of indecision about what to build first. I have seen management teams take up to 2-3 months to get things all sorted out before they could move forward.
The training industry today limits our understanding of enterprise readiness by only focusing on it in the terms of a single technology (i.e. SQL Server, Active Directory, etc.). But none of the books at Barnes and Noble are going to explain how to meet your customer’s expectations when it comes to enterprise readiness. Instead, focus on how a user perceives your solution and how to present your functionality for maximum impact to the sales process. You will soon discover there is a big difference between building a solution that contains the core requirements of enterprise customers and building a solution you can sell to an enterprise customer.
In today’s technology game, you need every advantage to win. By staying focused on building solutions and services for enterprise customers, you let the expensive do-over’s be your competitor’s problem. And after the two years, you will be selling to enterprise customers and those competitors are looking at your solution wondering how they will ever be able to compete.
Enterprise Readiness Keeps Success within Your Sights - To learn more about this author, visit Andy Piper's Website.
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Typically, a new technology company or business unit has two years to sell enough product to stand on its own. If you are not able to accomplish this, it doesn’t take long before you run out of money. Even worse, company leadership becomes anxious and erratic in their decision making while they struggle to keep the dream alive. This situation is far too common among start-ups and is usually the beginning of a downward spiral towards trying to sell the company or closing the doors.
The main reason behind these downward spirals is lack of enterprise readiness. In the beginning, a solution starts as a prototype or is acquired. At this stage, most people settle for just getting the technology up and running with bare bones functionality. This strategy gets them to market faster, but does not set them up to succeed long term.
Successful companies understand enterprise readiness. It is more than just building a set of product requirements. It is a combination of including requirements within the product and presenting these features to the customer in a way that instills confidence they require before purchasing your solution.
This understanding allows companies to set themselves up to succeed. First, they build their initial release so they can attain enterprise readiness within 12-18 months. This allows them to achieve their financial goals of sustainability. Then, they will structure their organization to provide the services enterprise customers will require to support and implement the solution.
Companies who do not adequately understand enterprise readiness fall subject to major delays and complications that keep them from attaining their goal. Lack of planning often causes companies to have to rewrite or re-architect major chunks of their solution. In most cases, these are major projects requiring several man-months in effort. Depending on the solution, these rewrites introduce complications around upgrades and migrations, as well.
When a rewrite is demanded (even if it is demanded by the market) a company’s management begins to show what they are made of. They need to quickly decide and prioritize doing these projects. In general, management teams struggle allocating resources for projects which do not gain them new functionality. They cannot drown out the constant screams of customers demanding more features. So, management teams easily fall into a state of indecision about what to build first. I have seen management teams take up to 2-3 months to get things all sorted out before they could move forward.
The training industry today limits our understanding of enterprise readiness by only focusing on it in the terms of a single technology (i.e. SQL Server, Active Directory, etc.). But none of the books at Barnes and Noble are going to explain how to meet your customer’s expectations when it comes to enterprise readiness. Instead, focus on how a user perceives your solution and how to present your functionality for maximum impact to the sales process. You will soon discover there is a big difference between building a solution that contains the core requirements of enterprise customers and building a solution you can sell to an enterprise customer.
In today’s technology game, you need every advantage to win. By staying focused on building solutions and services for enterprise customers, you let the expensive do-over’s be your competitor’s problem. And after the two years, you will be selling to enterprise customers and those competitors are looking at your solution wondering how they will ever be able to compete.
Enterprise Readiness Keeps Success within Your Sights - To learn more about this author, visit Andy Piper's Website.
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Dianne CramptonDianne Crampton is an executive leadership coach, team consultant, author and president of TIGERS Success Series, Inc. Dianne has been helping CEO's and Executives connect their employees to their core values and goals for over 20 years using the trademarked TIGERS team culture process, which stands for trust, interdependence, genuineness, empathy, risk and success. To download a free white paper on behaviors that build strong teams and behaviors that will predictably tear them down go here. - Visit Dianne Crampton's Website |
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Leanne Hoagland-SmithAre your sales where you want them to be? Will you be one of the few who achieves sales or business success or one of the many who have failed to change? Are you tired of being told you are like everyone else? Then you may find my first book on sales of interest. Be the Red Jacket in the Sea of Gray Suits, The Keys to Unlocking Sales available at Amazon or at http://www.processspecialist.com/red-jacket.htm. This book is a reflection of my no-nonsense approach to improving sales to overall business results. If you are truly committed to making sustainable changes, then I can help you secure a positive return on your investment because I focus on executable solutions not telling you the problems you already know you have. From training to corporate (group) coaching to executive one on one coaching, my approach is to assess, create awareness, build a goal driven action plan and then execute. The bottom line question is "Not do you or your employees know it, but do you or they want to do it?" Please call for a free strategy session at 219.759.5601. - Visit Leanne Hoagland-Smith's Website |
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Linda RichardsonLinda Richardson is the Founder and Executive Chairwoman of Richardson, a global sales training and performance improvement company. As a recognized leader in the industry, she has won the coveted Stevie Award for Lifetime Achievement in Sales Excellence and she was identified by Training Industry, Inc. as one of the “Top 20 Most Influential Training Professionals.” Ms. Richardson is credited with the movement to Consultative Selling and is the author of ten books on selling and sales management, including Sales Coaching — Making the Great Leap from Sales Manager to Sales Coach, and Stop Telling, Start Selling. She teaches sales and management at the Wharton Graduate School of the University of Pennsylvania and the Wharton Executive Development Center. Linda is a frequent speaker at industry and client conferences, has been published extensively in industry and training journals, and has been featured in numerous publications, including The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Nation’s Business, Selling Power, Success, and The Conference Board Magazine. Learn more about Richardson's sales training and performance improvement solutions at http://www.richardson.com web - Visit Linda Richardson's Website |
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