SME Philes: Who do you trust?

A recent survey of SME executives shows the vendor community has a lot to learn about becoming a trusted source of IT buying advice. Jonathan Steel analyses the results.

UK companies of all sizes have been steadily changing their approach to IT buying over the past few years. Driven by the disappointments of the dot-com boom/bust and by years of messages from analysts and the media that business and IT must get closer to each other, business leaders are taking a greater interest in what they are spending on IT.

More importantly, they have finally started down the path of realising that IT can only enhance business value if there is commonality of purpose - if IT is actually doing what the business needs. Sounds obvious but it's still a huge problem for companies of all sizes and will take years to sort out, even when business leaders have the confidence and conviction to see it through.

The consequences for the IT marketplace are complicated but there are some generalisations that can be drawn - one of the most important being that buyers are increasingly looking for an understanding of their business needs from their chosen suppliers.

And that doesn't mean the vendor has some vertical sales people who 'know something about the industry' in which they operate or that they have a set of vertical application solutions to sell. It means buyers want to feel that the vendors they deal with genuinely understand their real, everyday problems and have ways to make their lives easier, their companies more competitive and their IT costs lower.

In December last year, silicon.com and The Bathwick Group executed a survey which addressed a key question in this area - how much did respondents trust a selection of vendors to provide them with good advice for their business when making IT purchases?

The survey included responses from 567 SME (sub-1000 employees) leaders - a combination of senior IT executives and top non-IT business managers responsible for departments across the company. 423 respondents answered questions about their IT buying behaviour.

The results of which vendors SMEs trust for buying advice were stark, and while broadly similar across the two groups (IT and non-IT managers), there were a couple of big differences. Note - all the numbers quoted are percentages of those that expressed opinions about each vendor (excluding 'don't know' answers).

• The big winners were the 'traditional' big iron vendors, HP and IBM. 58.4 per cent of business managers trusted HP (63.6 per cent of IT execs) and 52.1 per cent IBM (58.3 per cent of IT execs).

• Cisco still has a low profile in SME boardrooms. They scored top amongst IT execs (65.4 per cent trust them) but were sixth (of 12) in the business managers' responses with just 41.2 per cent.

• The telcos came last. Cable & Wireless was twelfth and last in both categories (only persuading 13.8 per cent of business managers to trust them), with BT just above them in eleventh place.

• Microsoft should be worried about their performance, coming only seventh in IT managers' opinion (with 42.2 per cent trusting Redmond) and a lowly ninth in the boardroom (33.8 per cent), in both cases beaten by Oracle.

This last result is interesting as we have comparative data from a Bathwick study from two years ago, when 55 per cent of UK SME IT execs expressed trust in Microsoft.

Why the major drop? It's probably not to do with the well-publicised security problems that have beset Microsoft as the question is explicitly about business advice. It may well be that monopoly-related legal cases have bolstered Microsoft's image as relentlessly pursuing a Microsoft-only environment (not helped either by a largely anti-open source stance), which by definition would be seen to skew any advice the company gives.

But it is more likely that Microsoft has been caught out once again by its natural tendency to focus on the technology and have little to say to real business people, and little credibility in the business solutions space (as opposed to desktop apps) - while other vendors with long experience of selling to business are soaring ahead.

We also asked about trusted sources of advice on IT purchases. Software suppliers, big consultancies and computer system manufacturers shared the bottom three places in both sets of respondents, when multiple responses were allowed.

Unsurprisingly, in-house staff are most trusted with 89.2 per cent of IT execs choosing them and 82.1 per cent of business managers. But IT publications are big winners too - although they impress non-IT people (78.9 per cent) more than IT execs (63.1 per cent). The local consultant came in third, showing how important contextual understanding is compared with the poor results of the big consultancies.

The results are even more stark when respondents were pressed for their most trusted source (excluding in-house staff).

Perhaps the clearest overall result is the poor showing of the vendor community in general. Software suppliers and computers system manufacturers came in fourth and sixth (out of six choices) on the list, showing vendors have a long way to go both in showing they understand their SME customers' businesses and in gaining their trust.

Meanwhile, local consultants and IT publications came out on top. Local consultants were chosen as the most trusted source for buying information by 41.50 per cent of business managers and 30.80 per cent of IT executives while IT publications were chosen by 31 per cent of business managers and 40.9 per cent of IT managers.

Jonathan Steel is the founder and CEO of The Bathwick Group Ltd, an innovative research and publishing company.