Global Slowdown will Kill ‘Big Software’

SalesPush CEO Mark Donkin explains that the current economic slowdown is going the end the dominance of large corporate software companies.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE / PRURGENT
16th October 2008

Global Slowdown will Kill ‘Big Software’ – says SalesPush CEO Mark Donkin

Mr Mark Donkin, CEO of SalesPush.com, today predicted that the global economic slowdown will end an era of ever more complex and expensive corporate software products. Writing on the company’s News Forum, Mr Donkin said:

“Large software companies have made a good living over the past 20 years selling ever more complicated software products, for ever more inflated prices. But this trend has now peaked and will go into reverse”.

Donkin pointed to the dramatic fall in SalesForce.com (CRM) share price as evidence that companies are turning away from overly engineered systems weighted down by functionality that is often unused by the majority of employees.

“Businesses are under pressure to innovate as never before. They must respond instantly to changes in their market places. So they need products that are simple and adaptable. Products like SalesForce.com and Oracle on-demand are not poor products per se, but they are too unwieldy and complex for most organisations to use properly. I cannot tell you how many conversations I have had over the past year with managers who have purchased these products, often on expensive multi-user licences, simply to have them languish unadopted by a majority of the employees they were bought to serve.”

He went on to explain that simply delivering products on-demand (the so-called ‘software as a service’ model) was not enough:

“The key to a successful corporate software deployment is getting buy-in from the end users. Too many systems are bought by senior management and deployed by diktat. But if a product isn’t simple and quick to get going, employees, especially sales staff, will find multiple reasons not to use it.

This era of ‘big software’ is now dead. All but the very largest companies, who can afford to pay the armies of consultants to explain and implement these systems, are going to migrate rapidly away to simple to use, often free, products.

The future of corporate software is bright, but it certainly isn’t ‘big’”.

ENDS.

For further info. contact Mark Donkin, CEO of SalesPush.com at mark.donkinsalespush.com or call +44 7734 256709