How IBM’s Enterprise Software Advice Leads to Long Implementation Times
Question: What are the Outcomes of Following IBM’s Advice with Regards to Implementation Times?
Understanding IBM’s Value Proposition
IBM proposes that clients should listen to them and also trust their advice. They propose that they have the right answers to enterprise software questions and further serve their clients’ interests. Although often not explicitly stated, there is the implication that IBM will recommend applications and vendors that are both appropriate for the business requirements are of a reasonable value. However, is this actually true? The question we had was whether clients who followed IBM’s advice would benefit from faster implementations. Implementation speed is important because it determines how quickly the investment in the software can be paid back. In this article, we describe how we tested this exact question.
Our References for This Article
If you want to see our references for this article and other related Brightwork articles, see this link.
The Test
We tested this hypothesis taking our estimated implementation times for applications in 10 software categories and comparing them to software that IBM recommends. (A full list of the applications we cover is available from the drop-down to the right)
Those who do not work in the field might think that IBM’s advice varies per client and cannot be tracked. However, IBM’s advice does not vary. They have large IT consulting practices primarily built around recommending and implementing the same applications.
The Research Results
Our research showed that IBM uniformly recommended software across multiple software categories ranked as the highest risk in our MUFI Ratings & Risk measurement. Consistently and predictably, IBM recommended the applications that had the longest projected implementation time.
The Implications of the Research
This means that companies that follow IBM’s advice on enterprise software will go live later and likely have a lower average ROI from their implementations than companies that do not follow IBM’s advice. In fact, IBM’s performance was so poor and so consistent in recommending the longest implementation time applications that by randomly selecting software within a software category, any company would receive better outcomes than following IBM’s advice. This means that IBM’s advice is not even neutral. It actually has a negative value.
Why?
Of course, every month, extra that implementation continues is more money for IBM. This is the problem with using consulting companies for software selection – their incentives do not match their clients. This is also why IBM is slow to bring SaaS-based applications or more efficient applications to their clients. They simply can be implemented too quickly.