At Ephox, we often find most of our success when end users get involved in championing our products at their organisation. Of course, being an authoring tool it is rather fortunate that our software is highly focused on end user productivity and what we offer really resonates with them. Whilst not always the case, occasionally IT departments/software architects push back on looking at us because they are very busy firefighting elsewhere and quite frankly would rather be knocking off early (say before 10pm?) rather than having yet another technology to deal with. It really wouldn't matter HOW easy we made it for them, they simply are too busy to care. We get the best results when the IT departments are being run ragged by angry end users … then they really have pain to solve.
This experience appears to be consistent with a wider trend in the software of end users driving decisions. I have heard it variously referred to "bottoms up technology diffusion", the "consumerization of IT" and a key element of "Enterprise 2.0".
To get a fix on how big a trend Software 2007's survey came to the conclusion that:
When asked how this spend would be controlled in the future, 40 percent responded that software spending would be more business-unit (BU) controlled in 2 years versus only 28 percent of respondents predicting further centralization.
So it is definitely a trend, although the IT guys are still clearly in the picture. To make the most of this trend Peter Yared, CTO of ActiveGrid, has some interesting tips in selling to users:
- Self-Service Product
- Downloads, Not Meetings
- Sell to Users
- Feed the Channel
Peter's summary is to "Make software that is sexy with major features (that) are easy to use, get people to come and check it out, and then tweak it to the point where people want to pay for it. Software today is decidedly product-focused rather than sales-focused. This is great, since building excellent product quickly is the competitive advantage of a startup."
I would agree that the more you can shift your investment to the out-of-box experience (ease of use, installation and integration) the more likely you will be to get a new product launch off the ground and on its way to sizable revenues. That is not to say that growing a software company still does not require a large investment in sales and marketing… even Red Hat invests close to 50% of their gross profit in sales and marketing and NetSuite has consumed some $100M in venture capital to get to its IPO. But what it does do is focus where you spend your S&M $ … to an easy to use web site, community building, advertising and straightforward copy rather than in costly onsite visits. It also shifts the emphasis of where you put your R&D $…. to usability, installation and quality rather than the rocket science stuff that only a small percentage of people will use.