There’s hope that 2011 will be more Matt Cardle than Wagner (Carilho not Richard that is) for those in IT marketing.
Forrester (as reported on CIO.com) found that cost-cutting is no longer on top of the IT decision makers’ to-do lists. The pips of suppliers, staff and systems have all been squeaking for long enough. IT decision makers believe that further squeezing will give them little more than a mess. Their focus is now on making their departments execute and deliver.
Elsewhere, it’s also been reported that massive proportion of CIOs believe their IT is “behind the times”.
Computer Weekly has commented on the relative demise of the massive single supplier deal. Largely driven by the new government’s attitude to mega-flop deals, CIOs have moved away from winner take all deals. Such deals always involve compromises. Winners would rarely have the absolute best capability in all areas. Rather they’ll be the ones who do best in a couple of areas and are second or third or even “good enough” in others. CIOs now want to work with those with the best capabilities in all areas without compromise. So they are looking to suppliers who can collaborate with everyone rather than those who claim to deliver everything.
This is all good news for the IT B2B marketer.
There’s now hope that more budgets will be available for new projects to transform businesses. There’s also hope that there will be many more deals available to be done, even if overall budgets do grow only slowly. So there’ll be less dependence on a few “all or nothing” deals that can make or break suppliers.
Marketing yourself as a scarcely credible “we can do everything” supplier is no longer necessary or even desirable. Instead, we can focus on our ability to deliver what we do brilliantly and on the now equally important ability to work brilliantly with other companies. Then the IT market will hopefully recognise you as something they’ve been longing for – a trusted advisor who will work as hard at getting results for their business as they would themselves.
But as someone whose name I could never remember or pronounce once said, “Hope gives us wings but doesn’t teach us how to fly”. So things may be hopeful, but there’s still lots of work to be done.
