Business App vendors need to wake up in regards to marketing
By: Paul Oliver
Tags: iPhone, Bing, CRM

SAP, Oracle, Infor, Ariba, ACCPAC, IBS, Microsoft, NetSuite and many others — listen up folks. You all need to find a way to get to not those people who use your product to do their jobs excited about your products. The drug companies got it. They just do not market to doctors (for you that is the C-level types), but also directly to the patients. Turn on the TV after 9pm and see how many drug commercials are targeting their prospective patients (end-users to you all).

As I was considering what topic to write about this week, I traversed through my feeds from Twitter, to LinkedIn to a variety of other blogs (most more interesting than mine) seeking some inspiration. Not finding anything, I went through my favorite news sites and something started to form an idea in the back of my mind. It has been there for several weeks now but it formed a more solid thought as I looked through Business Week, New York Times Technology, and CIO.com. Where the heck is the news about business applications?

I admit I am not the king of RSS feed aggregation, but the only story I came across was on CIO.com about Infor buying SoftBrands (owners of Fourth Shift and some other products). Wahoo — NO more like blah blah, accept if I am a Fourth Shift customer than I would feel like acting like Yosemite Sam (for those under 35 click here — http://tinyurl.com/zzae3) .

No stories for weeks on end about what wonderful things business software like ERP, CRM, EDI or even CAD can now do to help a business grow, have greater profitability or let their associates become super efficient and effective. Not a one. Missing the boat folks, big time!

All the top stories are about consumer or desktop apps — iPhone, Office 2007, Bing, Facebook and Twitter. So, not one to just tell people what they are doing wrong I have some suggestions and an offer of direct help.

There is a company called Kinaxis that has a great marketing idea, just has not gotten it promoted well enough (need to hit mainstream TV or Hulu.com Kinaxis people). Check out http://www.kinaxis.com/supplychaincomedy to seek Kinaxis’s skits regarding supply chain organization and software utilization. There are only a few, but they hit the mark.

Come on Microsoft go ahead and steal Apple’s commercial concept and do the same thing but you are in the Apple role against SAP or Oracle who would be ah, well you in the Apple commercials. In the ERP space, you are the cooler company. Yes, hard to believe but trust me out of SAP, Oracle, Infor and the others — you are cool, well cooler. Create a skit of a accounts payable clerk getting frustrated by the problems processing a payment from multiple vendor invoices with the SAP guy spouting off about their ‘best practices’ in the background.

Market your products to those who go home each night begging for a better way to get their work done then using the dumb, old, not set up for our business and so on software they use today.

Yes, ERP is not sexy. Nether is CRM or EDI. But, it is necessary, so make fun of yourselves and your competition and talk about how effective your products. Call me if you need any ideas, where I work now I am surrounded by smart, creative people who appear to know how to make fun of themselves — geiger gets it (just a little self promotion for my new diggs).