How hard is it to buy and deploy software?
The logistics of airports keep me up at night. I can’t even begin to wrap my mind around how an airport functions when anything goes wrong. I was waiting at a baggage claim a couple months ago and one of the customers was on the customary rant of “how hard is it to not lose a bag?”
There’s two answers to that. First, it’s easy to not lose a bag. I’ve owned the same suitcase far nearly a decade and could probably stand to “lose” it. Second, it’s almost an impossibility that we ever get a bag. O’hare airport has over 1000 flights per day in a city with unpredictable weather… and those flights all come from somewhere with unpredictable weather and need to go somewhere with unpredictable weather, and those flights are on airplanes with complex maintenance in an industry whose workforce was decimated by a global pandemic. Everything works until something goes wrong. Suddenly, the simple task of not losing a bag become enormously difficult.
Welcome to buying software in 2023. Sure, clicking a docusign isn’t difficult. In fact, the project and product might both be simple enough, but the real challenge lies within the context of ever-increasing complexity. The lead buyer in a software project is almost always someone who has a competing day job they don’t get to abandon just for this one project, and that “everything else” is just the beginning of the complexities that compete with what a seller sees as a straight-forward deal.
I asked a veteran CFO what they were trying to accomplish when they “poke holes” in a project right before signing a contract. They simply said “I know things are going to go wrong, and I want to make sure we’ve shown our work, so we can fix things when they do.” Remember that “when things go wrong,” not if.
A staggering 77% of buyers told Gartner their last software purchase was extremely complex or difficult.
The problematic experience has led to more than 2/3rds of buyers seeking out self-service options, but those don’t correspond any better to success. Digital transformation has grown our “airport” from 8 applications to more than 80 in the last five years. Sellers can complicate a deal, but most of the complexity is already present in the form of the problem a buyer needs to sell.
There is a best practice solution, and it’s one Gartner and HBR agree on: buyers need to hold sellers accountable to making the buying process easier. How is this done? Communicate proactively by creating a project plan that can hold you both accountable. An actionable, proactive, and accountable buying/deployment plan makes projects 86% more likely to succeed, increases ROI by 3x, and decreases the chance of regretting the purchase by 37%.
Buyers don’t always get to choose their sellers. That’s just one more complexity in the buying process. But any buyer can choose to use project management to hold sellers accountable through the entire deployment and crucial first 90 days, and if you aren’t sure where to start… Sangria is 100% free for individuals and has more than 50 project templates to guide you through whatever you’re trying to buy and implement, so you can take control and leave nothing to chance.
