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How to Succeed in the Enterprise Software Market describes enterprise-level information systems that businesses use to support their processes. This book provides a clear and simple framework to help software companies understand this experience, and help them build software products compatible with...

Enterprise-level information systems are the information technologies (IT) that firms use to support their core business processes, such as sales, finance and operations. Well-known examples of these include enterprise resource planning (ERP), customer relationship management (CRM), business...

It is just not possible to deploy a new technology without affecting the behavior of the owners and users. Yet our product design, installation and sales approach do not fully address behavioral issues. This omission weakens the value and the business models of many emerging companies.

As discussed in Chapter I, successful enterprise software will assimilate rather than disrupt in their market niches. Assimilation is gradual change to something different. The noun “assimilate” means conversion, reduction, transmutation, evolution, sea change, transit, transition; transmigration, and...

To be successful a customers must be able to install and implement the enterprise solution within a reasonable time and without too much effort. Many potentially strong solutions require too much effort by the customer. This chapter has four parts to address the implementation issue. We look first at...

Corporations that need technology must make a decision. They can solve the problem themselves or purchase an outside product or service. Their core capabilities influence this decision and affect the value of the supplier’s product. It is probably difficult to sell ice to Eskimos. It is always hard to...

This chapter first describes challenges that software companies face in making a strong business case to prospective customers. These include a history of solutions falling short of projected business case expectations, the customer’s unique perspective of costs and the difficult issue of technology...

Renes Descartes (1596-1650) was a man of many talents. He was a mathematician, scholar, traveler, physicist, philosopher and thinker. In his spare time he was a primary contributor to modern philosophy as well as analytic geometry. According to Descartes, the guide to truth is to doubt everything...

This chapter addresses issues in systems development and design of software products. The goal is to describe three problems in the industry. First, is the inability of current methodologies and practice to factor in human and organizational issues. Second, is the high number of “one off” or custom...

This chapter addresses the inability of current methods to factor in human and organizational issues, the high number of “one-off” solutions produced in the industry, and the inflexibility of current systems development methods. Several case studies are included that point to the value of using...

Having a strategy and sticking to it is difficult for enterprise software companies. They can apply their skills and technology to many business problems and they are hunting in growing markets. Almost any pursuit can be declared “strategic” since it could lead to something big.

Your business is based on great ideas. You and a very talented team of engineers and business people are trying to figure out how to translate these ideas into products and a business. You know there’s a definite market for your product because you have already sold it. You’re starting to get some free...

Many emerging company’s products do not bridge from the old way of doing things to the new. The customer may be forced to use the Web and frustrated beyond belief because no human being is available. Or they are sent e-mail with a document link but cut off unexpectedly from paper. We can learn from...

Offshore development is no longer a trend, but a fact of life for building enterprise software. Programmers and operations staffs from the developed countries are under siege. A recent report from Forester Research predicts that over the next 15 years, 3.3 million U.S. services industry jobs and $136...

There is been much written on the period between Netscape going public on August 9, 1995, and NASDAQ peaking at 5,048.62 on February 29, 2000. March 10 of that year, by the way, was the worst day to buy stocks in 70 years (Berenson, 2004). This was not a normal period and this chapter will not attempt...