Thursday
24Sep2009
Dodgy characters and whistleblowers
Thursday, September 24, 2009 at 9:00PM I once described the enterprise software business as " a bunch of dodgy characters in cheap suits selling wish fulfilment to out of their depth executives.
This evening Gary Turner confirms my worst suspicions in a post headed Whistleblower
What does my head in is that people balk at paying a few thousand for social tools that will make a huge difference to their businesses but are happy to pay ludicrous amounts of money for stuff that makes life harder!


Reader Comments (2)
Worse, in my view, is the corporate organization (public sector, third sector, private sector) who eschew free or near-free open source solutions in favour of expensive software licences simply because they are unwilling to entertain doing business with any organization or firm other than a "name brand".
This is not merely what the market calls "successful selling" — often, the enterprise software salesperson is pushing on an open door, red carpet rolled out, and bags of enterprise cash ready to dispensed as a "gift" by a manager who is more interested in being a petty potentate dispensing his favours than one that conserves, protects and defends the integrity of his organization.
As far as I'm concerned, in a publicly-traded company, shareholders ought to demand an accounting of procurement practices; in a public-sector organization, citizens likewise; and in a not-for-profit, the donors. Until the money is threatened, the buyers won't change — and until the buyers change, the enterprise software industry won't, either.
This tendency confirms the marketing 'wisdom' that the pricing point determins (or at least heavily influences / acts as a signal for) the perceived value of a product in a potential buyer's mind. Basically, people are both lazy (so take short-cut signals at face value) and insecure (so are unwilling to take a risk on something that is free/cheap and therefore might be (literally) worthless).