IT Vendor Raves

Revenue on! - A grownup step for a tech startup

We are nervous and excited.

We're only a few hours away from flipping a big switch at VendorRate. We are about to convert the site to our paid subscription model. We knew we needed to keep this site independent from vendor spin. So, from Day 1, we decided never to accept vendor advertising.

However, this means our rating information has to be of sufficient value to make businesses willing to pay for it.   We already have thousands of ratings from IT professionals that provide insight into vendor performance. We've spent thousands of hours in interviews with business professionals at companies of all sizes to be sure we were capturing and displaying important vendor information.    Our price points are affordable for businesses with 10 or 10,000 employees. We have heard thousands of WOW! comments about the ease of use of our On Demand reporting system.   And we're told this fills a huge hole in the marketplace.

Despite all the great feedback,  we really don't know if we are hatching an eagle or a turkey.  

We're holding our breath. Please come watch with us as we take our first flight from the nest.

Rick's list of 25 'Must Attend' B2B IT trade shows for 2009

Here is list of major events and trade shows in 2009 that we think we should have vendor rating stations for our "Top Rated Vendor" reports.   Now it's time to prioritize!

Event	Start Date	City
TDWI World Conference - Winter 2009	2/22	Las Vegas
Design and Verification Conference & Exhibition (DVCon)	2/24	San Jose
The Channel Partners Conference & Expo - March 2009	3/1	Las Vegas
SD WEST 2009	3/9	Santa Clara
IWCE - International Wireless Communications Expo	3/18	Las Vegas
CTIA WIRELESS	4/1	Las Vegas
Storage Networking World, Spring 2009	4/6	Orlando
RSA	4/20	San Fran
Informix User Group Nat'l event	4/26	Kansas City
Oracle User GroupsCOLLABORATE 09	5/3	Orlando
Microsoft Tech-ed	5/11	LA
America's SAP USers' Group -	5/11	Orlando
DB2 User Event  North America	5/11	Denver
Interop-Las Vegas	5/17	Las Vegas
Global Connect 2009	6/7	Pittsburgh
Supercomm	6/8	Chicago
System Storage and Storage Networking Symposium	7/27	Chicago
TDWI World Conference--Summer 2009	8/2	San Diego
Open Source World San Francisco	8/11	San Fran
TechWave 2009	8/16	Wash.
Channel Partners Fall	9/23	Miami
CTIA-Wireless IT & Entertainment	10/7	San Diego
Oracle OpenWorld 2009	10/11	San Fran
TDWI Winter	11/1	Orlando
Interop-New York	11/16	NYC

Why do we hate our telecom providers?

We released our Top Rated Report for the 4th quarter of 2008. http://www.vendorrate.com/news/2009-01-13-VendorRate-Q4-Report.pdf

 Our executive summary mentioned a trend we've spotted during our first 10 months of observing IT and telecom professionals rate their vendors.  The strongest undercurrent of dissatisfaction among business professionals is directed towards their providers of wired telecom services, wireless telecom services, and data services.  After asking myself why for a few months, I think I've come up with my own answer. 

 I think the answer may be in their policies of captive contracts and device exclusivity agreements. If our company wants to roll out Palm Pre smart phones once they are released, we have to switch from Verizon to Sprint.  We did not deploy iPhones because we did not want to change to AT&T Wireless.  I personally had to "settle' for my 3rd choice of Blackberry.  My first two choices denied, I started out mad 14 months ago, and I'm still harboring resentment. A bitter aftertaste is always present.

Our business is totally dependent our data, voice, and wireless providers.  These vendors have leveraged our helplessness to lock most businesses into agreements we don't like.  I don't care how nice or knowledgeable the person on the other end of the transaction attempts to be, they are merely trying to  put air freshener in their outhouse.  

That's my take.  What's your organization's experience with your telecom and wireless vendors?

What I learned selling to Boeing-

One of the biggest lessons I ever learned in business came when I was attempting to get Boeing to buy our products for all their computers.

We had gotten pretty smart maneuvering our small company to win Enterprise accounts. We'd closed major agreements with Travelers, Liberty Mutual, Bank of New York, and FedEx.  Two of our major accounts, Starbucks and Safeco Insurance, were in Boeing's back yard. We had even won prestigious vendor awards with Lockheed Martin plus a major California utility.

 As I was bragging about our outstanding service, I mentioned our "24 hour response time."  This was always a show stopper, because our larger competitors were notoriously slow in responding to technical support issues.  Instead of being 'wowed' by our response time, my counterpart began to lecture me about the real meaning of service in a mild southern drawl.

 "We're in the aircraft business.  We don't care about response time, we care about RESTORATION time.  If a plane goes into a dive, it's not just how fast the pilot pulls back on the stick. It's how fast the nose of the plane comes up."  

This message has never left me, and it transformed our customer support to a new level even though we were already award winners.  

All vendors are going to experience a problem with a customer some time in their relationship. While communication is highly important, fixing the problem in a timely manner is the most critical element of customer service.  

 What I learned from Boeing- Fix customer problems rapidly.

Are you a high maintenance customer?

I'll paraphrase the head of customer satisfaction of a publicly traded company here in Silicon Valley.

"Despite the numerous statements IT companies make about providing great customer satisfaction, vendors really want customer apathy. Most companies hope a customer buys their products and then goes away."

I've heard the tag "high maintenance given to many customers over the years. In most instances, it is the vendor who is high maintenance. 

 Think about it. How many times have you heard a business say any of the following?

“We want our order shipped to us wrong.

 “We really don’t care when we get it.  Nobody on our team is scheduling their time for implementation or installation.

“Sure, emailing us with a response 4 days from now will be fine.  I don’t need the answer anytime soon.”

 “Please take our system down during peak hours.

“It’s ok if the price changes. Budgets are just guidelines around here.

“Send your junior field service folks to help us. We want to learn as they do.”  

The truth is that customers want to fix their business issues, not create more problems. Customers usually become “high maintenance” when their order is late, when the product is hard to install or use, when training is incomplete, or when the sales rep over promises and under delivers.  

The great vendors know the best customer relationships begin when the customer asks their first question  AFTER an order is placed.   That's not high maintenance, it's good business. 

2008 Top Rated Vendor Report

We’ve released our first year end report of top rated vendors for 2008. http://www.vendorrate.com/News/2008-12-15-VendorRate-Annual-Report.pdf

Our model is based on customer feedback, not internal analysis. We display summary satisfaction scores for IT and telecom vendors based on ratings we receive without editorial comment. Even our report titles have headings such as top rated vendors and lowest rated vendors, not best or worst vendor. 

For first annual report, the VendorRate team decided to momentarily step out from behind the curtain to share who we think were the best vendor and reseller based on rating scores, the caliber of the rater, and verbal feedback we received throughout the year. After all, we don’t just see the numbers everyone views on our website, we also know the identity of the raters, and we get to speak with thousands of attendees at trade shows, seminars, and industry events. By the way, we only offered our opinion for Vendor and Reseller of the Year. The remainder of the 2008 year-end report summarizes ratings entered by verified IT and telecom professionals since VendorRate went live in March of 2008.

When our Q4 report is released in mid-January, we’ll go back to letting the voice of the customer do all the talking. We’re much more comfortable staying behind the scenes while collecting and tabulating the opinions of IT professionals.

 

Oracle OpenWorld 2008

The Oracle community has been fantastic, and they have been sharing ratings in volumes.  We often have a wait at our 6 rating stations, and the users are promising to bring VendorRate back to their organizations.   We are quite grateful for the wonderful response, and our "Best Vendors" report from the Oracle community will definitely be our best ever.  Look for the report to be released towards the end of next week.

Also, please visit booth 2042 in Moscone South.   Another iPod Touch will be given away.

Oracle OpenWorld 2008

The Oracle community has been fantastic, and they have been sharing ratings in volumnes.  We often have a wait at our 6 rating stations, and the users are promising to bring VendorRate back to their organizations.   We are quite grateful for the wonderful response, and our "Best Vendors" report from the Oracle community will definitely be our best ever.  Look for the report to be released towards the end of next week.

Also, please visit booth 2042 in Moscone South.   Another iPod Touch will be given away.

Apple iPod Touch - Win one!

The new iPod Touch is simply beautiful.   I just received three of the 32gb models today for promotions we are running in September.    One drawing is from our existing membersship who rate or refer a colleague during September.   Another drawing is for new members who rate vendors this month, and the final drawing will be a trade show giveaway.

Apple really has their act together on this new product release. I ordered these immediately after product announcement last week, and they were on my doorstep 3 days later.  I'll forgive them for not doing the engraving, I think there was "pilot error" when I did the ordering.

Our iPod  Touch drawings are in addition to the $5 Starbucks Card we give out each time an IT or business professional enters a rating.  The iPod Touch promotion has had such a great response, we'll probably do it again in October. 

  This new 32gb Touch is so pretty and sleek,  it makes me want to enter a rating!  Alas, I'm ineligble :-)

CEO of ShoreTel joins the chorus

One of VendorRate's goals has been to allow companies that provide outstanding levels of customer satisfaction to stand way above the crowd of average and sub par vendors.   It’s a great to know we  help identify great vendors who really “get it” when it comes to customer satisfaction.

John W. Combs, CEO of ShoreTel, learned how well his company had scored on our LinuxWorld Report. Combs blogged how ShoreTel joins Amazon, Google, Apple, and VWware at the top of the LinuxWorld list in his recent ShoreTel blog http://blog.shoretel.com/2008/08/shoretel-lands-among-industry-leaders.html.    This is the first time the CEO of a publicly traded company has mentioned VendorRate results publicly, and we are both proud and excited.

As the volume builds across the numerous forms of media where VendorRate is being mentioned, we expect other CEO's of great organizations (of all sizes) to add their voice to the choir.   I hope every organization preparing to make an IT or telecom purchasing decision uses this brand new form of customer satisfaction "music". Only the best vendors want to sing out their great results :-)