Maybe software should be packaged like this?  Photo: Tetra Pak Package Portfolio, by Tetra Pak, CC license

A “packaged application” is software already built, coded, tested, used by other enterprises in your industry, and hopefully a solution that will meet most of your needs.  In general I recommend using packaged applications (why re-invent something?)

But a packaged application is not ready-to-use, in any sense of the word. The word “packaged” is kind of a misnomer. You won’t find a warehouse management system in a shrink-wrapped box on the shelf at Best Buy. A packaged application is simply one whose features and functions match in general terms what you want the software to do, but which still needs to be configured for your business. Configuration (also called setup) involves a lot of work and expense.

Much of the time involved in configuration is not in setting up all the data and parameters, but in deciding what data and parameters to set up. What data do you want to/have to set up for each customer? Should employees be “suppliers,” so that you can reimburse them for travel expenses? Do you want to manage your inventory levels according to min/max parameters or days on hand, or some other way? In most enterprises, decisions like these aren’t made by one person – groups of people get involved, and all those meetings and explanations have to be scheduled, and someone has to herd everyone into a decision. Not a quick process.

Packaged software is an annuity business. A software company survives in the long run because it is able to collect annual maintenance and support fees from its customers while providing custom development services and a stream of version upgrades. The support fees can be 20% to 25% of the original cost of the software license, so to the software firm, it’s like selling a new system to the same customer every four or five years. In exchange for the fees, the customer gets access to support desks, can have the software firm make modifications to the system usually on a time-and-materials basis, and automatically gets some upgrades and patches (or fixes) as well as user guides and maybe some technical documentation.

Recurring support revenue is highly profitable for vendors selling packaged applications. It is not unusual for big packaged software vendors like SAP, Oracle, and JDA to have this type of revenue represent 60+% of its sales while incurring only 5% or 10% of its operating expenses.

If you are selecting a packaged application, understand that your vendor will try to sell you the traditional on-premise solution, in which you will own and host the software while paying the vendor for additional licenses, upgrades and custom developments, plus the annual maintenance fees of 20% to 25% of the original license cost, which, on a license costing $500,000, for example, would be $100,000 to $125,000 per year.

And therein lies one of the most debated and disruptive topics in the software market today: the move away from the traditional on-premise (also referred to as perpetual license) model to a service or subscription-based model.  It is not exaggerating to say that the perpetual license model has in a way been the drug, the stream of highly profitable revenue, sustaining the software industry the past two decades.  Stay tuned.

Image by lofrev.net

It’s getting harder to determine which software vendors have what capabilities. This is because:

• The number of technology startups has increased;
• Big software companies have been acquiring other firms to increase the breadth of their capabilities;
• Established firms are rapidly making changes to their suite of applications – adding capabilities so quickly that it’s difficult to land on a static evaluation and comparison vs. other vendors.

The branding of specific functionality continues to proliferate. Firms don’t define their software’s features all the same way – they give them a brand name, which only adds terminology that is unnecessary and gets in the way of a clear comparison of features.

Firms are offering products and services that overlap what other firms offer, making it more difficult to weed out who truly offers what you want.

It used to be that, if your company needed software in some form – packaged or custom – it was “installed” on a server. Then a “client” for the software – a relatively small piece of software – was installed on desktops so that the software on the server could communicate with the user on the desktop.

In between the two was a local-area network (LAN), which is jargon for a wired connection. In this configuration, a user could launch the client software on a PC, and the client would, via communication over the LAN to the server, enable the user to fully use all the features of the software.

Players in this market looked like this:

• The firm that wrote the software;
• The firms or independent consultants that support the software;
• The firm(s) that helped you to install, configure, test and launch the software you bought;
• The company from which you bought your servers;
• The company that supplied your LAN and wide-area network (WA)

All of this has changed. Now there are vendors that can do all of the above, without stepping inside your building, through a web portal.

How do you get what you need in this environment?

1. Find the software vendors that know your industry and understand what they offer. Software companies are usually organized according to what they call industry verticals, such as health care, pharmaceuticals, consumer goods, banking. A company with lots of clients in your industry is a good start
2. Find the software vendors that are the best for your targeted functional area such as sales, manufacturing, finance, etc.
3. Focus on the firms that are well represented in #1 and #2 above

Image: “Computer Software Development” by Fabio Bruna, CC license

Being on the “buy side” of corporate software for many years I’ve seen numerous pitches by software vendors. A few were excellent, most were forgettable, and quite a few were incoherent. Like actress Clara Peller in the Wendy’s ads — for those of you alive in the 1980s — I was often left wondering: “where’s the beef?”

One thing missing from nearly all of these presentations: a clear understanding of what my company did and what our business needs were, not to mention how the software solution met those needs.  Nearly all the meetings with vendors centered around the software and its ability to do this or that.

Another common theme: the vendor would present a business problem — one that you may or may not have — how solving this problem is the key to business success, and how that is accomplished with the vendor’s packaged lines of code.

Some advice to software vendors:

Ask the potential customer what they hope to accomplish with your solution.  Listen.  Ask questions and clarify.  The first response you get is probably not enough information.  Once you understand the problem and how you can help then you are ready to present something.

Know the specific issues facing the customer’s industry. Is there a language used in that industry that someone in your firm is familiar with?  Many software vendors have expertise in selling to specific industries, but have few people in their organization who’ve actually worked in that industry.

Limit the accolades for your firm.  You don’t need five slides explaining how great your firm is and how many of your firm’s customers are household names.  The customer probably wouldn’t be meeting with you unless they already knew you were legit.

Most importantly — connect the dots.  Most people cannot, in their minds, translate software functionality into business benefits.  You must do it for them and you must use the language of their business to do so.  You also need to leave behind a draft business case for investing in your solution. Most people don’t know how to write a business case, for anything.

Photo by Jimmy Brown, CC license

FUD stands for fear, uncertainty, and doubt, and was a phrase used in the early 1980s to describe the unsettling and confusing atmosphere companies faced as they began investing heavily in software applications.

In 1979 Gideon Gartner, formerly a top technology analyst at Oppenheimer & Co., capitalized on that confusion and formed an advisory firm to help companies with technology decisions. Gartner Inc. now has a market value exceeding $4 billion and customers in 85 countries.

Although we have software tools far superior to what was available in the the 1980s, FUD still exists.

It exists wherever software marketers and commercial enterprises interact.  The dialogue is predictable: “Can your system do this, that, and the other thing.”  “Our system can do that, and much more; it can do X, Y, and Z.”

But the two parties (software, business) are talking past each other.  They aren’t even using the same language.

Software marketing is filled with evocative corporate-speak; it is opaque, conceptual, and general.  Meanwhile, the business person looking for a solution is mired in her own problematic world and knows in general what she needs but doesn’t realize that the software company she is speaking to has no idea of the details of her situation and even more cannot imagine it.

They speak to one another and try to find some common things they both agree on and understand.  The business person is left bewildered.  FUD.

Money pits thrive where FUD exists.  In this situation, bad and costly decisions are highly probable.

• Take a step back and evaluate your business and technology strategy.  Do you really need this technology or could you outsource the whole business process?  Will the investment in this technology make my customers happier?
• Before considering any solutions offered by software vendors, take the time to evaluate processes the software will support, document how those processes should flow in the future, and prepare a detailed list of requirements for the future application.  You will use this to evaluate the “fit” of each software solution to your situation.
• Like anything else, educate yourself before you buy.  Understand the type of technology you need, and the options available in the current market.  An advisory firm is recommended here; it will cost you a fraction of what you intend to spend and save you multiples of that.
• Change the conversation with the vendor.  Stop talking about the software.  Instead talk about your business context and the goals you have.  Most vendors really do want to understand your needs but they don’t have the advantage of being in your shoes.
• Take the vendor’s software solution for an imaginary “test drive.”  Spend time with the vendor walking through your future process and the associated technology requirements.  The result will be much more clarity and understanding of the vendor’s potential to meet your needs.

Two years ago I began exploring “cloud” software for integrating our company with its trading partners. This is how one company explains the benefits of its cloud software solution:

“Cloud supply chain platforms invert the traditional EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) hub equation by moving the data processing and linking logic from the partners at the ends of the spokes to the center hub itself. In this model, the entire value chain community leverages a common core technology utility so that all partners link to a single version of supply chain truth across the entire network.”

Here you have conceptual-speak, what sounds like preamble, and lots of jargon made to sound sensible (who can resist “a single version of supply chain truth across the entire network”?). In the section that is supposed to answer “what is this technology made of?” I come across this explanation:

“First, importantly, it is technology designed for the deep and detailed processes of a specific B2B domain. It is not generic. In this respect it diverges sharply from traditional EDI technologies that were designed for file transport and translation across all processes. Traditional systems take a “one size fits all” to information exchange: EDI file delivery for everyone, but a complete picture for no one.”

There’s more:

“In rich process domains such as supply chain execution, where the processes are long-lived and highly collaborative, what is needed is an information transformation layer that is knitted to the specific business processes at hand. Only by understanding the underlying and highly detailed data models and linkages of the critical business objects themselves can an information exchange platform create tight mappings to process. If an EDI VAN (Value Added Network) transports file packets, but is blind to the contents, the next generation platform interprets at the content level — it applies technology to the inside of the packet, in other words.”

None of this made sense to me, so I met with the firm’s representatives.

What they mean, as it turns out, is that their cloud software acts like a big private Facebook page, where your partners post data and transactions, as compared to traditional EDI, which is like passing a message to your partners in a straw where only you and they can see what’s in the straw.

One of the best ways to start a constructive conversation with a vendor is to say, “Ok I’m stupid. Connect the dots for me. You can link me to my trading partners like we’re all on Facebook. So what? Do I get rid of my EDI? What does that save me? Do I reduce inventories and order lead times? Will my customers and suppliers love me for doing this and will they partner with me on this approach?”

If a software vendor is good, that firm will assess your business situation first – your operation and processes – before trying to sell you anything.

So to handle the FUD experience you have to break the spell.  Be the spoiler in the room who is not going along with the feel-good lingo emanating from the vendor.