The cost benefits of listening and relationships during economic gloom
Over the last few months I have heard and read commentary after commentary about how to weather out the recession. Whilst there is no silver bullet, there are plenty of good tips to follow that, valuable during good times, are essential in the bad.
The global financial meltdown means that IT vendors are facing the same hard times as the rest of us. But, what will be key in their rhetoric is not only "what they
can do for you" by way of their products and services, but "what they
are going to do for you" by way of helping you weather the tough times too. What initiatives or programs are vendors providing and how sensible and pragmatic are they in ensuring that you achieve the most out of your IT investments (past and future) and don't unnecessarily burden you with
technical debt? Strong, effective and long lasting relationships are forged by the level and type of support provided in tough times as well as during good ones. Large suppliers may be able to offer more in way of financial incentives, but smaller players can often offer more flexible and accessible support.
So what are the vendors' strategies for helping businesses during these tough times? One example of a vendor that has been actively talking and listening to CIOs, employees and its customer base to help direct a strategy towards helping both its client base and the wider end-user market is Microsoft. At the close of 2008, I caught up with
Gordon Fraser,
Microsoft's UK MD to hear more about how the company was responding to calls for help with saving time and money and improving productivity. We will be publishing the interview in more detail later this month. For now, here are some of their key directions:
- Don't work harder, work smarter - Microsoft has developed features to enable smarter use of its technology with features that already exist in many of its products already in use within organisations. Most enterprises using the Windows server platform already have access to virtualisation technology that could help reduce the number of servers needed to carry out the workload or move workloads to more power efficient locations. Products like System Center target operational efficiency and excellence, whilst the company's collaboration and communications tools (e.g. Live Meeting with online video conferencing) are freeing up travel time, cutting costs and helping to reduce environmental impacts.
- Consider alternative delivery models - Cloud computing and hosted solution offerings are current hot topics because of their flexible business models for the licensing, usage, maintenance and management of IT collateral. Both technologies are high on Microsoft's priorities for engaging effectively with its client base and helping them to do more with less. The company continues to forge ahead with its "Software plus Service" offerings and announced its own cloud based server offer, Windows Azure at its 2008 Professional Developers Conference (PDC).
- Play a brighter tune with new financial instruments - To help ease the burden of obtaining credit the company has launched a number of initiatives to ease the payment costs for its technology and products. BizSpark, launched in November 2008 offers the full range of Microsoft technology and products, delivered through its partner ecosystem and deferring costs for up to three years. In a bid to help small and medium enterprises (SMEs), Microsoft UK has introduced a low cost financing programme for buying IT infrastructure and tooling that is tied to the bank of England base rate (currently 1.5%).
Undoubtedly, Microsoft is aware of the importance of listening and relationships, especially considering that along with other IT vendors, it is already feeling the pinch from restraints placed on IT spend. Maximising its ability to support CIOs and their IT organisations, SMEs and its own partner and community ecosystem is not surprising considering the company's vested interests. Microsoft clearly has an arsenal of solutions, services and well intentioned financial incentives at hand. Although pro-active in its messaging and smart with its incentives and product feature sets, Microsoft is by no means the only software vendor capable of offering such support. Listening and relationships are two way processes. So it is not just about vendors listening to their customers' during these hard times, but also about customers being receptive to what their vendors may have to offer them in terms of support. This will help the relationship blossom (which may bear additional fruit later on). Therefore it would be wise to check out what is being offered by vendors already in your supply chain before looking elsewhere.
The fact that vendors like Microsoft are keen to talk and listen to their communities and the wider end user market is important for strengthening the overall relationship between the IT supply chain community and the businesses that they serve. Addressing calls for being as flexible in their licensing models and easing the burden of total cost of ownership and operational support, through hosted and virtualisation solutions can allow organisations to think more creatively in their strategies for applying their IT spend during these tough times. Customers are also well advised to look at what technology that they already have in place, since they may not be using them all to their full extent, before spending additional revenue.
A couple of questions that I'd like to throw out to our readers for feedback are: what further support would they like to see from the vendor community as we face what looks set to be a tough economic and financial climate for the foreseeable future. What type of support matters the most?
Labels: economy, Microsoft, technical debt
