Okay – I’ve had this one in the pipeline for some time, and Paul’s comment about me not blogging enough has got me motivated. A bit unpolished, but what the heck.
Being a pre-sales engineer, I have a constant need to justify the solutions I put forward. Customers always want to know what they’re getting for their money – as they should – and are interested in the benefits that the solution will give them. The sales guys question parts of the solution so they can understand it, and the deeply technical propellorheads ask why we don’t just use some scripts. Aside: Don’t even get me started on how many stuffed up IT environments I’ve seen where techies slapped together a few scripts where they should have got the architecture of what they’re doing right in the first place.
Undoubtedly, whoever the conversation is with, it always turns to money. People don’t want to spend more than they have to.
But they don’t want shit. They don’t want something that won’t work. They don’t want cheap. They want something that is good. Something that suits their requirements. This is an almost universal maxim. Even if someone doesn’t realise it, deep down, people want something suitable for their situation.
Let me give you an example. Living on an acreage block, I need to do a fair amount of property maintenance. A few months back I was given a near-new Ryobi Electric chainsaw (worth around $100) which I’ve been using to keep my property from turning into a jungle. It has major issues. The biggest issue is that I’m limited by the length of the power cord. It’s also not very gutsy, and the chain is a huge pain in the ass to tension. It’s impossible to do it without the bar and chain popping off, and a long string of expletives exploding from my mouth.
As I found myself battling a branch from a wattle tree the other weekend, using three extension cords, chainsaw oil started leaking out all over my hand. “This is stupid”, I thought. The chainsaw was cheap – free in this case – but it doesn’t suit my needs. At this stage I’m planning on spending around $750 to replace it with a good STIHL model. The STIHL will cost around seven times what the Ryobi costs – but I will be happier. And safer.
While I used the analogy of a chainsaw, IT Infrastructure is similar. No matter what the requirement is, there will be any number of products, solutions, or workarounds to fit the bill. Each will have different capabilities. The solution that is chosen at the end of the day should be the one that is the best fit for the business – not the cheapest.
Let me leave you with a story.
A few years back I was having a conversation with a friend in New Zealand. Ray owns a successful company that provides project managers as a resource to large corporations in NZ. We were discussing his business over a cup of coffee at Starbucks.
“Ray”, I asked, “how did you get to where you are? How did you build your business?”
“It’s not rocket science,” Ray replied. “My project managers are good, but they aren’t cheap. But people don’t want cheap – they want good“.
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