I recently tested that theory among a group of 50 midmarket IT executives at a Society for Information Management meeting in Salt Lake City, Utah. I asked for a show of hands from anyone buying IBM products these days. Not one hand went up. In their last round of IT purchasing, how many had even considered Big Blue? Another no-show of hands. Should I even ask about IBM Global Services? I inquired. They laughed heartily at that one.
Funny thing is, IBM executives who follow the midmarket wouldn't be surprised by the results of this unscientific sampling. The world's most powerful IT company has done its own research on the fast-growing midmarket and knows how little traction it's getting in your purchasing decisions. "Our overwhelming challenge is not that we don't understand what the midmarket needs," says Steve Solazzo, IBM's general manager of global midmarket business. "Our overwhelming challenge is that we're not being considered."
When we met with Solazzo to research this story ("IBM Wants You"), he told us how hard it is to reposition a brand that spells big to everyone. Even though the SMB division is gigantic--with 90,000 partners and 800,000 clients, which now provide 20% of IBM's $91 billion in annual revenue -- Solazzo is focusing on the not-getting-to-the-table problem with midmarket customers like you.
So to all this growing awareness of midsized companies from major vendors like Microsoft, SAP and IBM, I say, "Let them come courting." In future issues, we'll profile the midmarket strategies of Oracle, Dell and Cisco, and we'll see how they're stacking up.
In another of our features this month ("Exit Signs"), you'll find some revealing accounts of how five CIOs decided to move on and find another job. Their discontent sprang from various sources: feeling disconnected from corporate strategy, getting discouraged by downsizing or outsourcing plans, or just succumbing to executive-suite boredom. But they all had a willingness to perform some self- analysis. Were they still learning? Still challenged? Still feeling the burn? "I was running out of big mountains to climb," admits Mykolas Rambus, a 28-year-old "serial entrepreneur" who left a CIO job with a real estate management company to get back into the startup game.
Finally, we reach the end of an ERP Journey, as CIO Les Johnson, a natural-born storyteller and straight shooter, wraps up this monthly diary. "We did a lot of things right," he says. Rolling out Intuit Inc.'s Eclipse product in five rapid-fire phases, the Bellevue, Wash.-based North Coast Electric Co. spent 26 months developing, implementing and training users to weather massive business system changes.
As candid and open as its 18 other installments, his final column sums up the successes and lays bare the shortfalls. "We ended up eight months behind schedule and will probably be 20% to 30% over budget after we do the postmortem," the CIO says. "While this isn't on par with some of the ERP horror stories you read about, there was room for improvement."
And room for high praise as well, I would contend. No one gets fired for getting the job done.
Maryfran Johnson, is the founding editor in chief of CIO Decisions. To comment on this story, email editor@ciodecisions.com.
This was first published in November 2006