Executive Summary
- This article explains the Brightwork estimation website to vendors.
Introduction
This article explains how our analytical products and calculators work and how your company can benefit from sharing them with your current clients and prospects.
What is Brightwork Estimation?
Brightwork Estimation is a site from Brightwork Research & Analysis that is focused on providing self-service analytical support to executive decision-makers. This means while we offer some associated services, that the calculators are designed to be used by our customers as decision support tools independent of other support.
Some of what the site plans to offer are analysis in the form of articles. The Software Selection Package, which includes Honest Vendor Evaluations and MUFI Rating & Risk, are examples of qualitative analytical products – this helps provide context. Still, much of the focus of the site is to provide quantitative tools. We have three types of calculators currently, but plan to add more when we have the time.
Brightwork Estimation the result of several analytical threads that have been partially documented in books from Brightwork Research & Analysis Press.
These books include the following:
- The Real Story Behind ERP: Separating Fact from Fiction
- Enterprise Software TCO: Calculating and Using Total Cost of Ownership for Decision Making
- Rethinking Enterprise Software Risk: Controlling the Main Risk Factors on IT Projects
- Replacing ERP: Breaking the Big ERP Habit with Flexible Applications at a Fraction of the Cost
The first two of these books are published, and the second two are in process. The books reference the Brightwork Estimations site, and Brightwork Estimation showcases the books as they offer a more thorough explanation of the calculations and logic behind the site. However, quantitative research and support are located at the Brightwork Estimation website.
The generalized conclusion is that enterprise software decision-making is far too frequently based upon simplistic platitudes that do not hold up under research. Some of the most common of these are listed below:
- One should always buy integrated systems
- It is good to concentrate your purchases from a single vendor
- Big vendors provide lower risk implementations than smaller vendors
- ERP, particularly “big ERP” from a major vendor, is a necessary component to a solution architecture
Most of the people making these statements are seeking to be influential without performing or even checking the research to know if they are true. There is nothing wrong with proposing a hypothesis. However, hypotheses are eventually supposed to be tested; yet in enterprise software, they never are. There is no interest in testing these hypotheses, as most of these logics are designed to support a previous existing compensation structure.
For the book The Real Story Behind ERP: Separating Fiction from Fact, all of the logic used to justify Big ERP were evaluated – and none of them turned out to be true. That is a 0% success rate — however, Big ERP proponents adjusted for this by simply changing the storyline over the decades.
Even though much enterprise software is quite sophisticated, decision-making enterprise software is permanently stuck in the Middle Ages. It does not incorporate scientific principles of testing. In this environment, mythology, and hyperbole controlling decision-making, and it leads to the poor quality of outcomes where the wrong application from a vendor with connections to consulting companies or IT analysts has selected over far superior and more appropriate offerings. As an example of this, I recently had a conversation with an SAP consultant who recommended using SAP functionality, that we both agreed did not work – but would ask if SAP corporate would commit to getting it to work. It is an interesting economic system where software vendors that lack operational functionality still receive the business over vendors that have had the functionality of working for years – and which can be readily purchased. But this is symptomatic of the enterprise software market. Furthermore, this individual is a person whose opinion is well-respected in the field.
How is Quantitative Analysis for Enterprise Software Performed Presently?
Generally, by the project managers with input from consulting companies and software vendors. In performing research on this topic, it’s rare to find entities that focus on performing estimation for hire that is not connected to other lines of business — for instance, consulting. Indeed, consulting companies will deliver this service – but considering they are all connected to the major software vendors, could anyone trust their “estimation?” Large consulting companies look at any estimation opportunities like this as merely sales opportunities for their enterprise software divisions – as implementation is where the real money is.
If one looks at IT analysts, they do not quantify costs, durations, manpower, etc.. Neither Gartner nor Forrester would have an ability to publish quantitative estimation, even if they were interested in performing them. This is because they both sell “technology advisement services,” which bring the most money form the largest software vendors. Gartner has a sales team in Florida that sells to or (“shakes down”– depending upon your perspective) software vendors with implied promises of better ratings in exchange for buying highly marked up “technology advisement services.” They want to keep selling these services, and when you perform the TCO analysis honestly, the results work in the opposite of their adherence to promoting large software vendors.
The entire enterprise software market is heavily tilted in favor of mega-vendors and more significant vendors and against the smaller and more innovative vendors. This is because the major consulting companies and IT analysts are remotely controlled by the major vendors. This is accomplished, in part, because quantification of the real costs and benefits are hidden from view. Consulting companies do not know, and would not share objective comparative numerical information to clients that would educate them, for fear of losing control over their decisions. Consulting companies want their clients buying software they have trained consultants for, and they do not want their clients thinking for themselves. IT analysts will not quantify factors for fear of alienating their “customers” from the major software vendors.
An important story from the research at Brightwork Estimation is that most of the most prominent name applications – that have the support of all the major consulting companies are some of the worst values. Some of the mid-sized vendors are sometimes decent values. Still, there is, in general, a negative relationship between vendor size and value, vendor size and innovation and vendor size, and the quality of the information provided to customers. However, this cannot be known unless one attempts to quantify the costs and benefits of the applications in a similar way — which is precisely what Brightwork Estimation has done.
The Problem Getting Pricing Information in the Enterprise Software Market
Even necessary pricing information is difficult to find. A lot of people enjoy using the term “free market” or “efficient market,” but many people do not know that one of the requirements of an efficient market is published prices – and beyond that published prices in totality or TCO. If one looks at Consumer Reports, they release a yearly TCO study of cars, which is quite illuminating.
This helps consumers make better decisions because they can see the full picture. Amazingly, while gathering this information, one software vendor sent us a non-disclosure agreement to receive pricing information. We can think of no other industry where pricing information deserves protection as “intellectual property.” This would be like a car company that required that you engaged in sworn secrecy before they told you the price of the new Buick LeSabre. You could not say to your friends the quoted price of the Buick LeSabre without legal liability. One might want to ask the question as to how efficiently an economic system would operate if the pricing of all items were considered intellectual property – only to be divulged in certain exceptional circumstances. This would make sandwich buying a tricky endeavor.
The Results of Hidden Prices
The lack of published prices, in addition to the inability to obtain TCO studies, leads the client to underestimate the actual costs, and makes the more significant vendors seem more appealing than they should. It makes clients more susceptible to simplistic platitudes provide by the major consulting companies and allows major consulting companies to make recommendations that are bad for their clients but profit-maximizing for them. This is because it’s not clear to buyers how much more inappropriate solutions cost.
Software selections that center around how to leverage resources trained in specific applications within the consulting company is not an actual selection at all but is a rigged system. One could say it is a corruption of an advisory function, but the major consulting companies never had a record of providing non-self serving advice in the first place. The consulting company is not advising their clients, but recommendations for courses of action which maximize the consulting company’s billing on the account. The fact that so few buyers can figure out this rather undeniable fact is perplexing, but this is the case.
What are the Benefits of Sharing the Brightwork Estimation Analytical Products?
The benefits are that your software is shown as the best or one of the best applications in its software category. Several themes can be utilized in your marketing. For instance, we estimate risk, and it is no surprise that the best quality applications are also the lowest risk, something which is most often only viewed by buyers exclusively through the lens of the size of the software vendor.
Quotability
Using quotes from Brightwork Estimation should be limited. We intend to get individuals to read the research. We also need to guard Brightwork Estimation against being seen as promotional. We received no funding from any vendor to perform our research.
Focusing on TCO
[show-rjqc id=”156″]Just this graphic can be useful in getting buyers to stop focusing on software costs. The costs above are truly “total.” We include the internal as well as the external costs for both implementation and support. For details on our TCO method, see the book Enterprise Software TCO: Calculating and Using Total Cost of Ownership for Decision Making.