A View from the Trenches

Hello, so welcome to my Blog. And this is my first sojourn into the world of Blogs so forgive me if it all goes horribly wrong . I never was one for a diary or journal before, although there was a memorable period when I was 9 when a frantic burst of enthusiasm resulted in 2 weeks’ worth of postings in a diary. Fascinating reading it was: Monday, got up, went to school, came home, watched TV, went to bed. Tuesday, got up, went to school, came home, watched TV, went to bed, Wednesday got up, went to school, came home, created plan for global domination, watched TV, went to bed. I’d like to set expectations low, this is going to be an occasional thing. Less is more, hopefully.

So my Blog is about the life and times of a salesperson – a rep, which my mother is sure is short for reptile. And not just any old salesperson, oh no, one who’s involved in the cut and thrust of selling business applications to small medium enterprises. Pretty heavy. I feel I should point out to any TV Execs who stumble across this and wonder if this might make a good TV series like some other more famous blogs that there will be very little sex in this blog, and any nudity will be because the plot demands it. It’s not Billie Piper, more Billy NoMates.

Anyway, back to the blog. This week I thought I’d turn my thoughts to ITTs. You know, Invitations to Tender, Requests For Proposal, Requests For Information etc. Those documents that companies produce when they’re thinking about replacing their systems. OK, so they have a purpose but I’m sure we have as much fun filling them in as the people do writing them. And I’m convinced that very few people actually read the responses, apart from the investment summary.....

I think most salespeople groan when they learn they’re getting an ITT. And moan when it actually arrives. Sometimes you only get a few days to respond, usually because the document has taken longer to produce because everyone’s had their say. So it’s a case of burning the midnight oil carefully crafting a response and getting your colleagues to input relevant information. Sometimes you get a few weeks which sounds great but for some reason that can only be explained using quantum mechanics and very difficult sums you still end up burning the midnight oil on deadline day.

Some of them are relatively easy to answer – there’s a question like ‘does your system do x’ and you’ve got a choice of answers: yes, no, in the next release, with minor customisation, with major customisation, sort of, other. Some of them require you to be philosophical, with questions such as ‘Back Orders and Stock Allocation,are they a good thing? – discuss with reference to relevant documentation, age and neatness will be taken into consideration’. And some of them require you to answer, in the minutest detail, every single point. So some poor sod (usually me) ends up writing loads and loads of information and you can’t cut and paste because the spreadsheet is password protected.

And then there are the other bits of information that you need to supply. Fortunately I don’t deal with local government anymore but in the past I’ve had to provide information about how many Newtons it took to depress the keyboard, which was not as many as it took to depress the author. However a lot of businesses have corporate and social responsibility guidelines and want to deal with ethical suppliers so these days we get questions about our carbon footprint, our diversity policies and whether we are involved in slave or child labour. Leaving aside the gripes of our developers I can categorically state that we are not involved in slave labour, nor are we in anyway involved with exploiting children. I mean, we are an enlightened company; it’s completely immoral to get small children to work in cramped conditions for hours every day for a small pittance. Plus not many small children are interested in developing code for supply chain and financial applications.

OK, ITTs can be useful explaining what the company is trying to achieve and in a perfect world an acceptable response would be ‘Yep, we think we can sort of do what you want, section C looks a bit tricky but big Dave reckons we’ve got a work around, we estimate it’ll cost you around £x, and we’re a nice bunch of people so do we make the short list?’. And an enlightened company would say “I like the cut of their jib.... let’s put them on the shortlist”. I have a dream etc.

But I’m guessing they won’t go away soon. And if there’s a consultant involved then no doubt they’re convinced that they’ve got a scoring system that is weighted perfectly so that the right system gets chosen. However given some of the information that we have to supply it makes me wonder how this can happen. I can just imagine the consultant summing up the process saying “Well, company X scored extremely high on functionality, theirs was the lowest total cost of ownership by a mile, but we’re slightly concerned that in section 4, company ethos, they’ve admitted to crimes against humanity.”

Still, I’ll get my revenge; one day I’ll get asked ‘What is your company’s approach to bullying?’ And I’ll reply ‘As long as you give Fatty Henderson your dinner money there’s no problem.’

Colin Harris works for Whitehouse Consultants, an Oracle Certified Accelerate Partner that sells and installs JD Edwards EnterpriseOne software for small medium business involved in Wholesale Distribution, Manufacturing, Construction and Engineering or Commercial Real Estate.
And you can send him an ITT, honestly he loves them really.
The views of the author are his own etc.