The Latest Trek on the Enterprise

 

Bruce R. Elbert

President

Application Technology Strategy, Inc.

 

Published in the June 2004 Issue of SatMagazine.com

 

Any organization that has a specific mission in providing a product or service to customers can be classified as an enterprise. For this reason, enterprises are found in both the public and private sectors. Public sector enterprises are non-profits that serve the physical and spiritual needs of clients, while their counterparts in the private sector produce assets and perishables for a profit. Either way, they must develop an enterprise strategy that allows them to compete with likely rivals who could do the same job in a more efficient or, as their clients see it, better way. Increasingly, information and communications technology (ICT) is a key aspect of competitive strategy, as demonstrated by the value of PCs and wireless devices along with Internet-based services and computer databases.

 

In our last article, we identified four classes of potential buyers of satellite communications ground equipment: a) Service providers, (b) Consumers, (c) Government agencies, and (d) Businesses. The last two contain the enterprises that satellite operators, service providers and equipment sellers could attract. The article in this issue by Alan Gottlieb presents a very practical view and approach for marketing professionals wishing to enter the enterprise market from the satellite perspective. I couldn’t agree more with Alan about the challenge of building the right kind of staff capabilities to find prospects and convert them into long-time buyers. I will take the point from there and address the “how” of the process.

 

First of all, the prospective seller of bandwidth, equipment or services must fully understand what they have to offer in the enterprise market. I have found that this is big challenge for companies and their senior management. It is a matter of listing the “assets” and “liabilities” as accurately as possible, and quantifying them in relation to (a) what potential enterprise clients need and want, and (b) what competitors have or could muster. The assets need to be broadly defined:

  • Satellite resources, in terms of orbit locations, coverage, frequencies, and reliability (the health and operation of that bird). One cannot build an enterprise business on a weak technical foundation.
  • Staff, e.g., people of the highest skill and integrity, who can “beam down” into whatever situation and deal with many unexpected twists and turns.  Like any good consultant, they must learn how the enterprise customer thinks and acts, and how to find solutions that are both attractive and profitable.
  • Relationships with a variety of supporting groups, such as subcontractors and teleport operators. Finding the right partners is as difficult as finding good customers.
  • Having the right financial backing to spend money where and when needed – not like one of those spend-thrift dot-com’s but more like how Warren Buffet decides to spend his.
  • Intimacy with state-of-the-art technology in both hardware and software, allowing you to identify the right contacts on the supplier side and manage their contribution from start to finish. Even James T. Kirk didn’t know it all, but he had every skill imaginable (in Gene Roddenberry’s terms) within his Enterprise.

 

There are obviously many more such guidelines, but the thrust is clear. You must have good officers and troops and equip them with modern weaponry (today’s “phasors”) to find that undiscovered country and make friends. Alan Gottlieb identifies “consultative selling” as the skill needed in most situations where enterprise requirements are to be identified. I would add that solutions are not “meals ready to eat” but must be created and prepared for the client. Importantly, the client needs to be encouraged to take an active part in its preparation. Lacking this, it is doubtful that a profitable sale can be made.

 

By implication, the sales cycle for solution selling in the enterprise is very long – not as long as the build cycle for a new satellite (in the range 18 months to three years). The guidelines I suggest cover what you will need to develop the solution for any enterprise, but one cannot be assured that even a good strategy will succeed in a particular engagement. This is the case because the game is strongly influenced by the environment of the enterprise customer. Consider the following example of the process we might go through building a good customer relationship:

 

  1. Our company, Enterprise Satellite Solutions (ESS) has identified Borg Systems as one of a number of prospects in an industry segment that could benefit from an enterprise satellite solution.
  2. By some means (Alan suggests cold calls, but another venue might be attendance at an industry event), marketing professional Joann Ohura makes contact with Frank Data, a telecom manager at Borg who expressed curiosity about what the latest in satellite technology might accomplish. They arrange a meeting where Joann and others might bring Frank and some of his colleagues up to date (Frank once worked for AT&T and had a limited involvement with Telstar a couple of decades ago).
  3. Joann discusses this with Tommy Spok, the brightest light among their systems engineers, who also happens to be a really good presenter. They put together a presentation of high quality and interest, which only indirectly promotes ESS.
  4. After a number of reschedules of the meeting (due to other pressing needs at Borg, such as a project that was about to crash and burn), the presentation is held and well received. No specific requirement is identified but Frank and his colleagues indicate that they will be thinking about it (what “it” is, no one knows).
  5. Joann resists bugging Frank (she is searching out other such potentialities and so isn’t sitting on her hands waiting for the phone to ring) but after several months she finds some reason to follow up. This could be nothing more than running into Frank at another conference or sending him an interesting whitepaper. Frank, meanwhile, hasn’t seen a need for a satellite solution and hence is not particularly interested in much contact.
  6. Out of the blue – and possibly nine months later – Frank sends Joann an email asking if ESS could give them a demonstration of tying land-based wireless to a satellite link. It seems they are in dire need to solve a communication problem that their regular suppliers don’t have a clue about.
  7. Surprised (not really), Joann nevertheless replies in a supportive manner that ESS will come for another visit to indicate some options and discuss what can be done to satisfy their requirement. From here, she reengages with Tommy Spok to create these options, which of course use ESS satellite capacity. However, Tommy realizes that all of the necessary resources are not yet at their disposal (nor does he know what, specifically, they need to be) and so research is in order.
  8. From this point, the team at ESS goes through the same process it always does to develop a solution for a known requirement and follows the path set out in my previous list of guidelines.
  9. Subsequently, the meeting with Borg occurs, but this time, Frank and company express a lot more interest and willingness to cooperate and even provide some of their own resources as part of a demonstration.

 

From this point, ESS would need to work hard and smartly to develop a cost/effective solution that can be provided at a profit. By linking tightly to their customer (becoming one with Borg), ESS gives every reason for Borg to remain loyal and thereby preclude a competitor from entering the fray. You cannot assume that the deal will be done, but you are on your way to developing this business. It is possible that this solution will be appropriate to other enterprises, although one cannot be sure of timing and volume. Instead, the Borg project gives our ESS team the confidence and experience they need to continue to strike out where no solution provider has gone before.