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Shopping: It’s a Love or Hate Relationship.
Most people seem to have a love or hate relationship with the act of shopping. It could be as simple and mundane as basic grocery shopping that happens to be a weekly necessity for those of us who believe in Maslow’s hierarchy of basic needs where food and safety are part of the foundation. On the other hand, it could be as complex and time-consuming as buying enterprise technology.
Grocery Shopping & Delivery Have Been Disrupted.
Let’s take a look at the business of grocery shopping and delivery first; everyone needs food. Choices now include Google Express and Instacart for those who’ll pay for the convenience and time savings. Even Amazon has gotten into the fray as you can see from this Recode article, “Amazon is putting veteran leaders in charge of its’s big grocery delivery plans.” If two heavyweight technology companies like Google and Amazon are investing in this, they clearly see an opportunity to fulfill unmet needs in this winner-takes-all market as R “Ray” Wang, Constellation Research’s chairman often states.
The Art of Enterprise Technology Shopping.
Now, let’s consider the art of enterprise technology shopping. Once you narrow down your options to the most likely type of technology that’s going to help you solve your business challenge, you still need to vet, procure, and then implement that technology and hope that you made the right judgement call. Careers can often be made or dismantled by this choice.
Your technology assessment could take anywhere from a few weeks to 18 months or more, depending upon your business criteria, the number of stakeholders involved, your organization’s business culture, and the complexity of the business issue that you’re trying to address. That’s precisely why we set up the Constellation ShortList™ program to help save time for buyers of large-scale technology, by making these insights freely available as a starting guide to the enterprise technology buying journey.
Technology Buyer’s Rights: How to Shorten Your Enterprise Technology Buying Cycle.
We’re releasing 40 Constellation ShortLists in our Research Library before the end of 2016. Take at these blog posts here, here, here, and here for more details on what’s been released already. That’s just for starters. Here's the full list of Constellation ShortList categories, if you're curious.
Why struggle to build a list of top contenders when you can trim that effort and start your buying process with a Constellation ShortList. You can then take consult with experts like our Constellation analysts to find out which technologies are going to be the most suitable for your business. As strategic advisors, our analysts cover a wide range of industries, including telecommunications, healthcare/medical, automotive, retail, government, manufacturing, finance/insurance, media/advertising, hospitality, and technology.
Enterprise technology shopping can be a challenge. Making the right decisions are crucial to organizational growth, and it’s not worth the aggravation to take an uneducated guess. If you take a look at R “Ray” Wang’s “Enterprise cloud buyers bill of rights,” you’ll get a sense of why he, and in fact, our entire analyst team, take your needs as a buyer seriously.
Don’t Take our Word for It. Find Out Why It Matters.
It’s been thrilling to see the enthusiasm in the market, and we’re honored with early recognition from Ludovic Leforestier, one of the co-founders of the Institute of Industry Analyst Relations (IIAR) who is also the Director of Thought Leadership and Analyst Relations at BearingPoint. For those of you who don’t know about IIAR, it’s an independent organization that weighs in on perceptions of analyst firms on behalf of analyst relations professionals. Find out what Leforestier had to say about how Constellation’s disrupting the analyst industry with his post, "Constellation and the curse of the quadrant”.
Constellation ShortLists Accelerate the Enterprise Technology Buying Journey.
Effective technology shopping requires forethought, planning, and expert guidance, so that you identify the pitfalls to avoid and the best practices to leverage. To streamline your efforts and maximize your business outcomes, that’s where direct advice from Constellation’s seasoned analysts can save you time and aggravation, in identifying the right technology for your business.
To get advice on matters like this when it counts and at the right time and get connected in an exclusive community for innovative leaders, a solid first step is to join the Constellation Executive Network. By joining you’ll get access to disruptive technology research, expert advice, analyst dialogues on trending topics, business insights, events, and more.
