Sally is a really busy person - more vendor yap
(anti-buzzwords)
Had a week full of vendor meetings and presentations this week,
captured some random thoughts:
- Bad Buzzwords 1 - I definitely tune folks out when
they use the word "cool"
to describe some piece of technology - how 1990's. The weird one came
this week from a older gent, representing a fairly large company that
has mixed hardware and professional services areas. A true moment of
cognitive
dissonance to hear that one.
- Bad Buzzwords 2 - Another one - probably a pet
peeve of mine, maybe not for most folks - is the old "disparate
systems" rap. That so reeks of EAI high concept junk words. I once
wrote an RFP that specifically prohibited the use of the phrase;
nobody violated the provision, but nobody asked about it either, so
they have no sense of humor or don't read the things.
- Here's a classic - sexist examples of use cases / scenario
building. We were looking at CRM packages, and the idea that most
status reports were being handled by "Sally
the receptionist" typing the stuff in. In a later conversation -
different vendor, same product area - "Sally" had at least graduated
to rep level. I wonder who this archetypal Sally person is, she has
really left a strong impression on the world.
- Bad Buzzwords 3 - I like calling vendors on the
carpet when they use buzzwords to make their product a mandate. Best
example, but this was a few weeks ago, was the hardware vendor that
pointed out their enhancement would increase bus throughput from SAN
storage to the CPU - helping with SarbOx
compliance. Oh? Which specific requirement included hardware speed in
support of tight financial controls? That one was actually fun, my
Tech Ops director said I was in rare form.
- Similar situation this past week with one of the CRM
vendors. They held that their analytics engine was a unique
competitive advantage over the other folks. Exactly how? I wondered;
all the examples shown were quite similar to the transactional report
samples shown earlier in the day. No obvious answer sprang to mind,
but within a minute or two he mentioned something fairly key, and I
pointed out that he had stumbled upon the exact reason why their
engine was better - the ability to perform complex trending over
time.
- Note how the reps will often parrot the words you use when
describing your situation or what the critical success factors are
for a given project. In a conversation earlier this year, I learned
another rep secret is to mimic
the seating posture of their target, to increase the sense that you
are of the same mind / personality.