In most companies, the CTO or CIO comes nowhere near the kinds of purchasing decisions made by the kinds of companies started by a process like this. There are many tens of dir/it or dir/ops people in almost any Global 2000 company that routinely make six-figure purchasing decisions.
Many of those decisions do percolate to the CIO/CFO level for approval, but there is a world of difference between "purchase approver" and "decision maker". Directly targeting the purchase approver is often a very bad sales strategy.
Good point. A VP of Operations/Infrastructure (of IT) who would report to a CTO/CIO would be more suitable. I guess I should have clarified that a bit better. It's also, as you allude, not as simplified as this.
Either way, my point was more about the fact that working day to day-to-day IT work won't give you the edge unless you have some sort of in with the guy/girl who ends up actually making the purchasing decision. It's also not as simple as this, as IT/Business organizations can be muddied with politics that don't always serve the IT personnel's productivity interest.
It also doesn't hurt to also get in with procurement. Which is another barrier I've found in "BigCo". Many large (Global 200) companies have a shortlist of companies they will work with and won't even entertain a conversation unless you are a certain size or have a pre-existing contract with them.
I agree. Solutions pushed downstream from the executive level (usually from someone who happens to play golf with the bosses) really succeed, because they aren't usually what we actually need.
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In most companies, the CTO or CIO comes nowhere near the kinds of purchasing decisions made by the kinds of companies started by a process like this. There are many tens of dir/it or dir/ops people in almost any Global 2000 company that routinely make six-figure purchasing decisions.
Many of those decisions do percolate to the CIO/CFO level for approval, but there is a world of difference between "purchase approver" and "decision maker". Directly targeting the purchase approver is often a very bad sales strategy.
Good point. A VP of Operations/Infrastructure (of IT) who would report to a CTO/CIO would be more suitable. I guess I should have clarified that a bit better. It's also, as you allude, not as simplified as this.
Either way, my point was more about the fact that working day to day-to-day IT work won't give you the edge unless you have some sort of in with the guy/girl who ends up actually making the purchasing decision. It's also not as simple as this, as IT/Business organizations can be muddied with politics that don't always serve the IT personnel's productivity interest.
It also doesn't hurt to also get in with procurement. Which is another barrier I've found in "BigCo". Many large (Global 200) companies have a shortlist of companies they will work with and won't even entertain a conversation unless you are a certain size or have a pre-existing contract with them.
I agree. Solutions pushed downstream from the executive level (usually from someone who happens to play golf with the bosses) really succeed, because they aren't usually what we actually need.