I don’t mean to sound cruel to high tech marketing people, but some of them need a reminder: Having company people read your white papers online — right down to fumbling over the long words — does not a valuable webinar make.
I prefer those presentations where I hear from a third-party expert — an analyst, author, consultant, practically anybody who knows something and isn’t on the company payroll or board of directors — who introduces a topic and gives me some valued data. When I’m warmed up and feeling like I’ve learned something, then you can hit me with the sales pitch for your product or service. Somehow, it goes down easier.
I’m applying this opinion to a Webinar I’m listening to right now — put on by Vieo, a service management company.
Bob Fabio, the president and CEO of Vieo, introduced the topic of service management. Mr. Fabio is a founder of Tivoli Systems, which, of course, eventually sold to IBM. My guess is that he has some interesting views about service management, but they sure didn’t come through in this session. You’d think a brilliant business guy like Mr. Fabio, who’s been involved in high tech companies for his entire career, would be brimming with observations about the state of IT, the morass that service can be, his opinion about what’s wrong with current approaches. But, no.
The most interesting points he made came from a survey done by the Enterprise Management Associates. For example, 44% of IT departments rely on customer complaints as their first warning of service level problems. Correcting fairly routine service level problems can take nearly 24 hours.
Maybe the company should have had the author of the research on as the expert instead. In fact, I’d recommend sitting through some of the sessions hosted by EMA. You can find a list of events here.)
In the meantime, come on, Bob! Let some of that genius shine through! If you can't, I may just have to close the browser window where you’re currently residing…
