B-to-B Marketing in a Buyer-Driven World

Alinean and sales and marketing consultancy Sirius Decisions just wrapped up an important new webinar for marketers - B-to-B Marketing in a Buyer-Driven World. The webinar introduces new and important research on buying cycles and how changing requirements require new marketing models and tools to effectively reach frugal and empowered buyers.

View the recorded webinar at:
https://alinean.webex.com/alinean/lsr.php?AT=pb&SP=MC&rID=36102367&rKey=d3ff9731a0eaff48

Nearly 40% of Marketers Plan on Budget Increase in 2010

According to BtoB's "2010 Outlook: Marketing Priorities and Plans" survey of 376 b-to-b marketers, almost 40% say they plan to boost their marketing budgets in 2010 , and only 13% plan on cuts. This, compared to 57% who said they were cutting their budgets in 2009.


Of most importance ito marketers is generating revenue, and participants see lead capture as thier number one initiative according to the survey, particularly increases in on-line spending.


BtoB's survey found that within online marketing, the top areas that will see spending increases include Web site development (70.7% plan increases), e-mail marketing (68.6%), search marketing (62.3%), social media (60.3%), video (50.7%) and webcasts (46.0%).

http://www.btobonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20091116/FREE/311169986

IT Services require ROI Justification More Than Ever

According to the latest Enterprise IT Services Survey by Forrester Research, buyers of IT services are taking a variety of measures to get more value for the money spent on IT services. The survey of more than 900 IT executives and technology decision makers in North America and Europe reveals that unlike the last recession where most IT services irms experienced growth, most respondents indicated that they will be spending less with consultants and managed service providers, and that pressure to reduce IT spending is going to continue well into 2010.

According to John McCarthy, VP and principal analyst at Forrester, "The data shows no quick turnaround - it's going to be a tough year for services firms as clients increasingly ask them to justify the ROI for IT projects and provide more value for a lower price."

Most services organizations however are not prepared for these new challenges. Services organizations have traditionally underinvested in the research and tools to make it easy to include an ROI analysis as part of the services proposal.

For service organizations seeking renewal or expansion on existing contracts, it is essential to provide an annual report card of savings to the organization. How can you expect a customer to spend more / renew unless they are convinced you've saved them money or delivered some other tangible value. One services organization we worked with was able to reduce churn by 60% and increase renewal deal size by 10%, even in these tough times, by implementing a Realized Value Report Card program for existing accounts. The tool collected basic information about the organization's costs and issues over time, and used research to determine how the services helped to avoid labor costs, reduce overspending, reduce issues, reduce risks, improve service levels, and do more with spending less.

New services customers are more frugal than ever, and services organizations have to tie the new services proposals to tangible savings / value, or risk not getting the priority the project deserves, or worse yet, lose the deal. Typical ROI proposals can include hard cost avoidance, but should also include a quantification of the value derived via the services service level improvemetns, scalability, time to market and risk avoidance.

Forrester research clearly indicates that frugal buyers demand ROI justification, and as a result, IT services organizations need to invest now in research and tools to change the way their sales consultants engage with customers. Quantification of tangible value and return on investment are required. The IT services organization that understands this and invests in a selling with value program will have a better connection with today's frugal buyer, and a clear competitive advantage.

More information about the IT Services research report can be found at: http://www.forrester.com/Research/Document/Excerpt/0,7211,55203,00.html

Making it rain with Cloud Computing from Microsoft

To coincide with the launch of Windows Azure Platform at Microsoft's PDC conference in Los Angeles, Alinean has been researching weather this new Cloud Computing platform from Microsoft can deliver tangible benefits and a solid return on investment (ROI).

Interviewing several early adoptors of Windows Azure worldwide revealed not surprisingly that the Windows Azure Platform can help organizations reduce capital investment requirements, and drive operational cost savings in managing and supporting servers, power and cooling and datacenter space costs. As less resources are available in many of the organizations, the ability to leverage these resources for the most important tasks, while relying on the cloud for day to day operations was important.

Even though cost savings and resource focus were important, most early adoptors cited the less tangible aspects of the Windows Azure Platform as primary drivers, for example:

1. agility to react faster to growth demands than they could with a Physsical vs. Cloud infrastructure
2. scalability to grow without boundaries of resources / space
3. capability to launch applications faster
4. reachability to have datacenters in key locations without having to build-out or colocate assets in these regions

In our tangible value assessment of Windows Azure Platform, we found that it can deliver:

• 40-70% savings over non-virtualized on-premises server farms
• 10-15% savings over virtualized on-premises servers
• 75% or more savings for burstable computing environments, where compute power is needed for short periods of time during each day, week, month, quarter or seasonal.

As every environment is unique, we embodied this research into an on-line tool so that organizations can:

1. Answer a few questions about their application and needs
2. Be provided with guidance as to the size of the Windows Azure environment
3. Receive a pricing estimate as to the cost of Windows Azure Platform services
4. Obtain a total cost of ownership (TCO) comparison of on-premises vs. Windows Azure Platform
5. Review all assumptions to fine tune the analysis for unique opportunities and expectations (no black boxes here).

The result of using the tool is a Word / PPT report about your unique opportunities and potential return on investment.

The tool and casde studies can be found at: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/tco

Sales Success rests on building Strategic Roadmap with Customers

In today’s tough selling environment, a sales enablement best practice is to deliver tools to help sales professionals compete better. Most sales enablement groups have started to implement best practices to help connect better with customers in the later stages of the sales cycle, including tools to create better business cases (ROI Analyses), deliver and quantify competitive comparisons (TCO analyses), provide better RFP responses, and build better proposals.

But a recent blog entry by Scott Santucci, Senior Analyst for Forrester caught my eye, positing that sales enablement spends too much time trying to get sales professionals to better respond to customer needs late in the sales cycle, and not enough time engaging with the customer on creating a shared vision. The customer vision the sales person needs to create is how to specifically solve the business problems they’re facing.

As Forrester outlines, there are three important elements to vision success:

1) Authentic — it has to be real, well-researched, and obtainable.
2) Applicable — it has to be communicated in the context of the account and the stakeholder.
3) Actionable — the path (and the required details) to realizing that vision are mapped out into an understandable approach, but also simplified so the program doesn’t collapse under its own complexity.

The blog entry can be found at: http://blogs.forrester.com/tech_sales_enablement/2009/09/the-quest-for-vision-selling-ahead-of-the-rfp-.html

Alinean concurs from implementing over 1,000 different sales enablement campaigns, that earlier in the sales cycle sales teams indeed need to connect better with customers goals and help them develop strategic roadmaps for success. Too often we see sales professionals jump to product recommendations and try to deliver tactical ROI analyses on specific projects, when the customer still is undecided on a roadmap.

Forrester indicates that, “significantly better returns await those who invest in programs to help customers shape a solution vision. This is done by creating scalable and repeatable programs to help sales people more easily collaborate with executives to develop a shared vision of success for a given account.”

Such a shared vision and solution roadmap can allows sales professionals to move from products sales to trusted advisor.

How can this be done? Some of the most successful programs we have created recently provide strategic focused assessment tools to help sales professionals, in a structured and methodical, yet easy way to prepare a strategic roadmap for their customers:

These tools are designed to automate the strategic assessment and roadmap building process by:

· Assessing a prospect on their current capability and maturity – providing an assessment of areas where improvements are needed

· Scoring the current performance dynamically versus industry leaders and peer averages – highlighting where issues are greatest, and providing competitive comparisons for motivation

· Mapping solutions to solve each problem area – automatically recommending a strategic roadmap to close capability and maturity gaps and best address indicated pain points

· Delivering high level quantification of what savings / value can be derived by implementing the suggested roadmaps

These tools have been implemented for Microsoft, HP, Unisys (in collaboration with partner IDG), EMC, VMware, and RedHat - all with significant success. These assessment sales tools have been proven to help sales professionals build strategic vision for customers, significantly advancing and elevating their relationship with customers, and deliver significant return on sales enablement investment.

One of the best examples of this program is Microsoft IO Self Assessments and can be found at:

http://www.microsoft.com/optimization/tools/overview.mspx

ROI RIP?

A recent headline from CIOInsight caught my eye: ROI RIP: Not really dead, just overrated.

The article link can be found at: http://blogs.cioinsight.com/cio_strategy/content/budgeting_and_finance/roi_and_the_strategic_cio.html?kc=CIOQUICKNL10222009MOD4

In this article from Arthur Langer, he explains that CIOs and CFOs care more about strategy and less about financial ROI calculations. With earnings season in full swing we know that this is not the case as CFOs in an environment where revenue is hard to come by, are squeezing every ounce of cost out of the business to post good earnings and maintain enterprise value. When times get tough, its the companies that can quickly reduce spending that win during the downturn and in the early stages of recovery. CFOs are more frugal than ever and DEFINITELY care about the ROI of each and every project. However, Mr. Langer could not be more spot on regarding his advice to not rely on ROI alone to sell a project. The strategic CIO knows that appealing to the frugal executive is only part of the game, and that project presentations need to paint a picture of the project for the stakeholders, and tie the project clearly to specific corporate goals.


How important is ROI still? In Gartner's latest press releases from IT Symposium in Orlando, one of the key highlights for budget management next year is financial management of IT. According to Peter Sondergaard, senior vice president at Gartner and global head of Research, "IT Must Learn to Build Compelling Business Cases — 2010 marks the year in which IT needs to demonstrate true line of sight to business objectives for every investment decision. IT leaders can no longer look at IT as a percentage of revenue. CIOs must benchmark IT according to business impact."
Part of the business case will be numbers that demonstrate how much is being spent, tangible benefits the business is expected to achieve, and risks that these costs and benefits will be as anticipated. ROI is required.

However, having worked on ROI / TCO of IT for the past 20 years at Gartner and at my own IT value focused independent research firms, too often these business cases focus exclusively on financials and miss the bigger picture. As important in the business case is to tie any of the proposed initiatives to strategy and business goals. A proposed project that saves the company money in this climate is a good project. A proposed project that saves money and contributes / achieves one of the companies top goals is a superior project.

Crunch the numbers and use ROI to convey quantifiable savings, business benefits, costs and risks - required in these frugal times. Paint a strategic picture of the project and how it will help the organization achieve key mission goals as Arthur Langer implores - vital to approval and success.

Gartner highlights importance of business cases to address budget woes at its annual IT Symposium in Orlando

According to Gartner’s latest research, the IT industry is exiting its worst year ever in 2009, as worldwide IT spending is on pace to decline 5.2 percent. According to Garner’s Peter Sondergaard, Senior Vice President at Gartner and Global Head of Research, “While the IT industry will return to growth in 2010, the market will not recover to 2008 revenue levels before 2012.” According to Peter, “2010 is about balancing the focus on cost, risk, and growth. For more than 50 percent of CIOs the IT budget will be 0 percent or less in growth terms. It will only slowly improve in 2011.”

Budgets will be hard to manage as business conditions change from optimisim to pessimism in light of uncertain conditions. Barbara Gomolski, managing vice president at Gartner highlights this, as “IT leaders need a new type of budget, a rolling forecast that supports the return to growth. IT organizations need a budget that gives them the flexibility to respond to the changes that they know are going to come, and those that they cannot yet identify.”

From a budget perspective, Gartner highlighted three important items that IT leaders must consider in 2010, and one of the top recommendations was for IT executives to focus on quantifying the return on investment from IT. The advice from Gartner, “IT Must Learn to Build Compelling Business Cases — 2010 marks the year in which IT needs to demonstrate true line of sight to business objectives for every investment decision. IT leaders can no longer look at IT as a percentage of revenue. CIOs must benchmark IT according to business impact.”

Although frugal executives need quantifiable ROI proof prior to project approval, with less resources than ever, they don’t have the time or research needed to create ROI analysis reports. IT executives remain in need of vendor assistance to create compelling and credible business cases, with our surveys indicating that over 65% expect vendors to quantify the value of any / all proposed investments. Now more than ever, IT solution providers have an opportunity to help IT executives make the business case for proposed projects by collaborating with them on business case development.

Read the Gartner press release and advice here: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Gartner-Says-IT-Spending-to-bw-1095435779.html?x=0&.v=1

Datacenter virtualization only at 16%

At Gartner’s IT Symposium in Orlando this week, Gartner released the latest census on datacenter virtualization. According to Tom Bittman, vice president and distinguished analyst at Gartner, only 16 percent of workloads are running in virtual machines today, but this is expected to rise to around 50 percent of x86 architecture server workloads by the end of 2012. To help achieve the promised cost savings of virtualization, Gartner advocates a ‘start small, think big’ approach to virtualized server deployments that begins with a specific project but builds towards a wider strategic plan that includes management and process changes.

To help organizations put together better virtualization plans and prove the return on investment from deployments, Alinean has developed a tool for VMware deployments, available for free at:

http://www.vmware.com/files/elqNow/elqRedir.htm?ref=http://www.vmware.com/go/calculator

For those interested in Microsoft virtualization, Alinean’s assessment tool can be found at:
https://roianalyst.alinean.com/msft/AutoLogin.do?d=307025591178580657

The original Gartner announcement can be found at: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Gartner-Says-16-Percent-of-bw-624642808.html?x=0&.v=1

BizTech Magazine features Alinean ROI tools for virtualization

Biz Tech Magazine profiled five technologies which could help provide quick payback and significant ROI. http://www.biztechmagazine.com/article.asp?item_id=637

To help demonstrate the value of one of these, datacenter virtualization, the magazine featured two ROI tools from Alinean. Their advice, IT decision makers don’t have to crunch the numbers on their own and can use ROI / TCO calculators from Alinean to help produce credible business cases.

To quote the magazine, “There are many effective ROI calculators out there, including this go-to calculator from Microsoft: www.microsoft.com/virtualization/why/roi and this provided by VMware: www.vmware.com/go/calculator”.