Posts by Ian Campbell

The features of a product (workflow, integration, single sign on, etc.) drive benefits that can be measured but are not benefits. I was going through an exercise a few weeks ago with the marketing team from a large vendor. The marketing folks were convinced that each of their product features would be worthy of its…

I’m all for free. We’re ROI guys here and it’s hard to argue with something that has a divisor of zero. That said, free isn’t always the least expensive. Free beer might be hard to overlook but an offer of free puppies will to require a bit of math before making the commitment. And that’s…

I’ll let you in on a secret… when I hear an end user talk about the need for customization I roll my eyes (and I know I’m not the only one all of you vendors out there). It seems every company in every vertical market believes their processes are special in some way but the…

Last week I had a call with a very concerned vendor sales rep who had calculated an ROI more than 5000% for a prospect. I took a quick look at their ROI tool and it was clear the benefits were very strong compared to the costs. The problem in this situation was that the benefit…

We’re not a big fan of the changes in Windows 8 for the desktop since we’ve calculated measurable retraining for limited increase in value. We are however pleased to see Microsoft making a real attempt at iOS and Android. Everyone has missteps but we’ll overlook Windows CE just as we’ll ignore the dismal failure of…

When it’s a story and not a calculation. We work with a lot of vendors and their marketing folks, especially in startups and smaller vendors, can be passionate about their products. So passionate that in creating a list of the benefits their solution delivers they can get too creative. We look at benefits as 1st,…

I’ll come right out and say it: green initiatives are a stupid idea. The topic came up recently and it was pleasantly noted that the green trend had died off as a technology topic. That’s good news. Companies care about making money, and your average CFO will gladly pollute the groundwater or dine on the…

I’m not a big fan of the total cost of ownership calculation. It was a reasonable idea many years ago, but I’m not sure it’s relevant today. The TCO trend was born out of a problem with initial and ongoing costs. In an effort to win deals, many vendors reduced the initial cost of software…

Technology makes employees more productive, and with more productive employees, I need fewer of them to accomplish the same work. We can debate the state of the economy and the rate of recovery, but the overriding theme we’re seeing in technology deals is a focus on cutting the bottom line rather than expanding the top…

My recent posting on best of breed led to a discussion with a few of our analysts and vendor clients about the future of technology. There’s consolidation by the big vendors (SAP, IBM, Oracle) but if we define the act of conducting business from the business view rather than the technology view what do we…

We’ve been looking at deployments of IBMs Cast Iron and Scribe and in particular we’ve been investigating how to best quantify the value from these integration solutions. The obvious benefit is the reduction in the time needed to integrate applications but the secondary benefit is the ability to keep current with the latest versions of…

Remember “Best of Breed”? Organizations would spend inordinate amounts of time on RFPs, bake offs and reviewing piles of research white papers to identify the best application for a specific task. Those were the days when applications did one thing and the IT department held power over decisions. How times have changed. Best of breed…

A long time ago (well, maybe a very long time ago) a high school teacher of mine argued that water was the most significant force on the planet. It carved valleys, eroded mountains, and the freeze-thaw cycle is practically unstoppable. Putting aside the arguments for nuclear and electrometric forces, I’ll argue that economics is actually…

We noted our lack of enthusiasm in our posting back in October and Windows 8 has lived up to our expectation of underwhelming the masses. Our internal view here was that Windows 8 was the El Camino of software and represented a compromise that, like the El Camino, made it neither a good car nor…

Let me go a little off topic for a moment. It’s no surprise value is an increasingly important part of technology decisions, and Nucleus has been experiencing significant growth in business lately. We’ve launched a new Web site and we’ve been expanding both our research and sales teams. Traditionally, we’ve relied on experienced analysts for…

This is the 11th year of the ROI Awards, and we’re evaluating some great submissions. We won’t announce the winners until June 3, but there are some clear trends. First, it’s hard (actually, it seems impossible) to beat a SaaS solution. Very low initial costs and the ability to match annual costs against annual benefits…

Microsoft is one of the few large tech companies that rely on an indirect channel. Using resellers made business sense when Microsoft was growing and their products were sold in boxes. As Microsoft’s solutions grew in complexity, resellers took on the role of consultants, and adding value to the solution became their mantra. But the…

… is the one you don’t need to build.” I didn’t say that. The folks at Manhattan Software were in our offices recently, and that clever statement came up during the conversation. Corporate real estate management on either side (lessee or lessor) can get complicated quickly. If your most expensive asset is people (for which…

Finance people think differently. That’s the first point I make when I present to vendors and end users. When you build a business case, think like a finance person and you’ll be successful. Don’t plead your case, make it. Don’t use the power of persuasion, rely on the numbers. We rarely make cold financial buying…

Hyoun Park covers Business Intelligence for Nucleus and just published a research note on Little Data. I gave him a hard time a few months ago when I saw a coffee table-sized Big Data book on his desk. When books like that are being published there’s something wrong with the topic and Hyoun knew that.…