Bilateral Symmetry

R&D investments stagnating and engineering software sales slow down.
From a software customer perspective, three factors are shrinking investments in engineering software:

1. Open source software. Customers start to consider open source software as an option.
2. Mergers or acquisitions.  Newly-consolidating client companies maximize interoperability and reduce software redundancy, i.e. they get rid of the ones they don’t need anymore.
3. Wide Area Network vs. Local Area Network. Global companies want to deploy software on global scale. They need to reallocate software licenses into main servers, to gain economies of scale and optimize expenses for software.

From a software vendor perspective, three factors are driving sales down:

1. Open source software. Software editors consider open source (only) as a threat.
2. Mergers or acquisitions. Newly-consolidating software companies maximize interoperability and reduce software redundancy… It takes time, money and makes their clients endlessly ‘waiting for the next release’.
3. Wide Area Network vs. Local Area Network. For obvious reasons, global software vendors (still) like to sell software on local basis, avoiding clients to gain economies of scale and optimize expenses for software.

Symmetric perspectives on software sales drop-off.

Code Vs. Software

People use either “Code” or “Software” as if they were synonyms. Sales-engineers often use “code“. Sales-non-engineers always use “software“.

The distinction between Code and Software is subtle. Programmers write codes, the list of statements that give instructions to computers. The software is the end product: what the users perceive.

When demoing the software, the above difference can be significant. It’s software what our customer is buying.

There Is Never Only One Consumer

I’m wondering who is my customer.

In our Interlocked world, identifying the customer is not easy. From a sales person perspective, the customer might be the engineer who uses the software, or the IT person who tests it, or the manager who decides. There’s a whole team behind every customer. Users,  influencers and buyers are Linked-In, ruling other buyers.

From a sales manager’s point of view, the primary customer is the sales representative. Sales people are the intermediate buyers; they might see product benefits you have not considered yet.

Pagina successiva »