Solutions for a rainy afternoon
In tough times you have to prove there's a reason why your customers need your services.
Among those service offerings and applications that tend to do best in a down market are some that have fallen out of fashion.
Asset management solutions, for instance, should return to favour, as companies look for ways to physically track and monitor the financial value of their IT assets.
"When times are flush, customers don't see the need," says CompuCom's Coleman. "But in a recession, asset management is a definite pain point."
Indeed, any application or service that helps get a handle on runaway expenses is likely to thrive. Robbins-Gioia LLC, a project management firm, recently developed a portfolio management solution that helps customers determine which project investments are winners, from an ROI perspective.
Barry Calogero, executive VP of business development at Robbins-Gioia, says the process aligns an organisation's projects and investments with its goals and strategies. A gap analysis tells a company's executives which projects to fund and which to scrap.
"Sometimes the best decision is to stop," notes Calogero.
Another hot area right now is outsourcingââ,¬"-traditional data centre engagements, Web and application hosting, and various managed services offerings. Outsourcing generally meshes well with the customer's need for cost reduction, while maintaining service levels and a fixed price. It is no accident that major outsourcing providers like EDS and IBM are holding up relatively well in a declining technology market.
Content management and customer relationship management apps also are seen as solid plays when it comes to crunching ROI numbers. In an environment where cold-calling is not effective, you've got to make sure that you keep your existing qualified customers happy.
And, finally, some service providers are having success offering "self-healing" tools. CompuCom, for example, is moving from the use of live agents on-site to self-service tools that deliver greater efficiency. Coleman says CompuCom is making this transition via an alliance with Support.com, which recently established a local office in Australia.
Hopefully, say industry observers, the renewed focus on selling ROI will extend beyond the current downturn. Chris Pariseau of Stonebridge says that no matter what the business climate, every solutions provider should be moving from a transactive to a consultative sales process, where "relationship cycles" and billing cycles do not necessarily correlate.
"You always want your customers to be dollar-ising the benefits," he says.
