This just in: hardware may be a commodity; the desktop may be dead. Technically, I should agree and insert my elevator pitch (you know, because my product is SaaS). I’d rather agree, dismiss the latter, and provide some perspective.
For years now we’ve been fighting pricing wars, playing strategic partnerships against each other to win impossible RFPs, and rolling out noodle solutions hoping something might stick so we can call it our differentiator.
It’s painful, time-consuming, costly and well, needs to stop.
First things first, just because something is a commodity doesn’t mean it’s obsolete. When it comes to end-of-life, evolution, innovation, and strategy – we are so consumed with the technology we completely forget about our audiences. We think we know what they want, but do we really? How can we if we don’t really know who “they” are?
I like to use the analogy that one man’s trash is another man’s treasure. Much like the world we live in, businesses today are an insane mix of hipster millennials, traditional gen-xers, the lifestyle VAR, a born-in-the-cloud innovator, folks with families, others without, some that prefer standardizations with Apple and others with HP. We have those that are social media haters and others that are social media bigots.
With an audience like that, it’s damn near impossible to make careless assumptions that something will or won’t work especially when we are talking generalities. What isn’t important to a millennial may be exceptionally important to a gen-xer (I use the generational gap as the example because it seems to be the topic of conversation these days).
So what’s the answer? If we can’t do it all and we can’t afford to not do it all (yes, I just used a double-negative that’s completely acceptable in this scenario) – how do you develop this kind of target? Automation. And, guess what, it is wildly more palatable than it ever once was. (I can say that because we have over 30,000 users doing it!)
By automating workflows to eliminate operational overhead and prioritizing ease-of-consumption, Partners are finding more time to spend targeting the right audiences with the right solutions. Just remember, any publishing company can sell you an audience, any Vendor can sell you an asset, but if you don’t have any way of automating your said asset to your said audience, you’re better off getting back to noodle tossing.
For more automation information and toolset to help you grow your business, contact us at vardynamics.com / @vardynamics / #cloudplus