From the Trenches: How IBM is messing up
Fri, August 20, 2010 at 11:55 Many large corporations run with messy processes and dissatisfied customers – and keep making profits because of their immense market power. It is a shame, and not an encouragement for others.
Take the example of Lombardi, a leading software provider for Business Process Management. Easy ordering and setup process used to be their key strength: you could buy licenses online and start working in a few minutes. That customer-friendlieness deteriorated dramatically when IBM took over the company a few weeks ago. 
Now, you need to contact a sales person in the U.S. (no matter where your company is located), get a bunch of hand-made terms & conditions sheets and membership sign-ups for portal pages that you never asked for. The credit card number has to be provided by phone or fax, and then, after a few more manual steps you finally get your account up and running.
The process now takes up to 3 weeks versus 5 minutes, it is non-value generating, time-consuming and customer-unfriendly. The costs for IBM must be immense – but who cares?
WHEN WILL EVEN GLOBAL BEHEMOTHS UNDERSTAND THAT THEY NEED THE CUSTOMER TO SURVIVE? And that they need to execute on their ambitions – each day, everywhere?
Even the mighty can fall if they disconnect from their customer base. And you as a customer have the choice: there are always better providers.
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© Copyright by New Pace Consulting SA, 2010. All rights reserved.
Reader Comments (1)
Hello Volkmar,
I agree with you. Just adding my thoughts on this one.....
The big companies just survive based on their muscle power and the established customer base. Also, most of the times, they do not have alternatives in that range. For example, if a big company like UBS wants a Business Process software they do not want to go for any smaller company if they have IBM, mainly they do not want to take any risk of scalability. Big companies like IBM as well do not want to go for individual customers or small businesses as it is less ROI and they want to stick to big fishes.
On the positive side of it, because of this, there will be a market created and there could be another entrepreneur initiating a innovative solution aimed for smaller companies.
Anyway good thinking and observation.
Regards
Velan