Value Propositions for Complex Event Processing
If you’re like any potential customer of CEP, you’ve probably heard the phrase “Value Proposition.” If you’ve bought software in the past, you’re probably sick of the phrase by now. I know I am.
But what’s worse is attending presentation after presentation being told by academics and sales folks what the value proposition of CEP is – sure there are some underlying tenants. But I found that most of the folks here at the Gartner Event don’t have it right. Bigger, better, faster is a requirement for getting through the door in Capital Markets – if you want to see your prospect’s eye start to glaze over, focus on speeds and feeds.
This failure to articulate the value to potential customers is evident – it’s evident in the lackluster attendance for the event and it’s evident in some vendors specific approaches to sales – they’re selling solutions instead of a CEP platform.
When CEP isn’t sold as a platform, with a relevant value proposition to the customer, and a solution is marketed – the only thing left to negotiate is price.
Selling platforms is hard – selling platforms in Capital Markets is even harder; probably one of the most difficult sales jobs on the street.
For a company to realize the tremendous benefit of CEP that their organization can attain requires a diagnostic approach to finding problems – what doesn’t work well in the organization today and why?. This diagnostic should focus on processes in the firm both where events are processed one at a time and where a lot of events have to be processed very quickly.
A good vendor should know where their CEP based platform can help their customers. An excellent vendor should be able to provide best practices and knowledge gained from helping other clients solve these problems. An outstanding vendor listens to their customers problems and/or initiatives and sees where their CEP platform can add value and just as importantly, not add value. This is called the Relevant Value Proposition – one where the prospect has helped to craft the expectation of value provided by the CEP solution.
Change and Pain
Capital Markets firms don’t change unless the cost and envisioned solution is less than what they’re currently experiencing. No one likes change and no one likes pain. So, an effective CEP vendor should be an agent of change and provide a road map of how to get from where the prospect is today to a place where they realize all of the wonderful value provided by the CEP platform. This changes the role of sales person to one of Leader who applies resources from both their firm and partners to ensure that their customer’s efforts are met with success while reducing the pain and risk of change.
Moving Forward
In the current economy, firms with resources should be taking advantage of the breathing room and investing in solutions for the anticipated upturn. Those CEP vendors that can articulate meaningful and relevant value propositions will find a ready and willing customers in Capital Markets – despite current events. Those vendors engaged in the age old practice of persuading you to buy their point solutions, aggressively over coming objections and continually discounting price in response to pressure will not.