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Only the other week I was reminded there is a useful little trick when watching a housing software demonstration, particularly from those bigger suppliers out there hoovering up applications like there is no tomorrow.
While everyone else is admiring the shiny dashboards, brightly coloured tiles and suspiciously flawless customer journey, have a quick glance at the browser’s URL bar. It can tell you rather more than the suppliers death by PowerPoint does.
What is being presented as one seamless, fully integrated supplier platform may actually be several separately acquired products, still running on different domains, different technology stacks and, occasionally, entirely different login arrangements. The supplier may have applied the same colour palette, added its logo in the top corner and carefully rehearsed the demonstration so nobody notices the joins, that's the smoke & mirrors.
It is the software equivalent of badge engineering. New grille, fresh paintwork and a familiar badge on the bonnet, but quite a lot underneath has come from somewhere else entirely. Like the 1980s Triumph Acclaim, that was really just a (very reliable) Honda Ballade underneath. Probably one of the best cars British Leyland never built actually!
There is nothing inherently wrong with acquired products. Buying a decent application can add useful functionality to a wider product suite much faster than attempting to build the whole thing from scratch. The problem starts when the demonstration implies a level of integration, maturity and live customer use that has not yet been achieved. Its not just housing systems either, HR/Payroll, Asset Management & others all can suffer from this phenomenon.
The demonstrator moves confidently from CRM into housing management, repairs, scheduling, mobile working/field service, payments and reporting. Screens open, data appears and nobody has to type the same tenant reference into four different systems. It all looks sexy & marvellous, and the natural assumption is that several other landlords must already be running this exact combination successfully.
Sometimes they clearly are not.
One customer may use the CRM. Another may use the repairs module. Somebody else may have implemented the mobile application. There may even be a landlord trialing the scheduler. But the complete collection of products being demonstrated may never have operated together in a live housing environment.
That is a rather different proposition. A landlord can believe it is buying a proven integrated platform, only to discover halfway through implementation that it is actually the first organisation attempting to deploy that exact mixture of products, interfaces, data flows and business processes. At that point, the word “customer” quietly becomes “pioneer”. We have all seen them in the Hollywood cowboy films, generally the ones with the arrows in their backs!
Suppliers generally prefer more uplifting terminology. Strategic partner. Early adopter. Design partner. Lighthouse customer. All lovely phrases. They can also mean you are helping them finish the product (or maybe start it!).
Being first is not automatically a disaster. It can bring greater influence over the roadmap, more attention from senior supplier staff and an opportunity to shape how the solution develops. It can also bring considerably more testing, integration risk, consultancy days, workarounds and meetings involving sentences such as, “That might be available in the next sprint/release.”
You may also discover that things you reasonably regarded as defects are being logged as enhancement requests. Apparently, expecting two products sold as an integrated suite to exchange information correctly can sometimes be quite an ambitious customer requirement.
The key question during any demonstration is therefore not simply, “Can the system do this?” Most suppliers can make something appear to work for 12 minutes in a controlled demonstration using carefully prepared data.
The better question is, “Which live customer is using this exact combination, in this exact way, today?”
Not a customer using one of the modules. Not a customer planning to implement it next year. Not a customer who has signed a contract but has yet to go live. Not somebody who attended a webinar and said it looked promising.
A real, live customer using the same products, the same integrations and broadly the same processes, at a comparable scale. Then ask to speak to them.
If nobody can be named, the demonstration has not necessarily shown you a proven integrated solution. It may simply have shown you a rather attractive experiment.
….and you may be about to pioneer it all the way to the falls.
Related Post: Make the most of demos, ask the right questions and understand the answers
I would be pleased to connect with you on LinkedIn - http://uk.linkedin.com/in/tonysmiththathousingitguy Message
me with any issues or queries, you would like to be explored in this
blog. We generally receive a couple of suggestions each month.
Interpol - Pioneer To The Falls
(c) Tony Smith, Acutance Consulting www.acutanceconsulting.co.uk 07854-655009
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