Navigating Enterprise Needs

Supplementing our discussions on how to most effectively build enterprise-ready software, “Navigating Enterprise Needs” turns its focus on the infrastructural requirements that enterprises themselves bring to purchasing negotiations. In this video, three enterprise CTOs analyze how you can best approach enterprise customers and accommodate their unique implementations of a product.

A buyer’s level of technical investment in the purchasing process can often depend on how dispersed or centralized their team(s) using new software might be, as well as how directly that software will impact their product architecture. On top of the differentiating features that enterprises tend to look for–such as RBAC, SSO, and audit logs–your ability to comply with industry regulations is especially crucial. Once those standards are met, you can more effectively leverage your product’s functional advantages over a client’s opportunity cost of building internally. However, preparations should still be made for frequently desired risk profile evaluations, which can include IT security audits, penetration tests, and SLAs.

Enterprise buyers will likely value your anticipation of whether a top-down or bottom-up adoption will yield better results. While in some environments a bottom-up method might innately emerge as best-practice, for others the class of application and, in particular, the strength of its enterprise features will determine the integration model. If sprawl across an organization requires as much simplicity as possible, for instance, you’ll want to support SSO so that enterprise users’ point of access to a chosen tool can be centralized and streamlined.

Ultimately, some of the most effective ways that your sales teams can turn prospects into successful customers is to pitch smart: be able to gauge your audience’s level of technical proximity to the adoption process and sell the product at that level. Past that stage, always be clear about what your product does and what it doesn’t do. Diligently managing expectations around functionality and compliance early on will go a long way in avoiding deal-breaking roadblocks down the line.]

Panelist Include:

• Kimber Lockhart, CTO of One Medical

• Ralph Gootee, CTO of PlanGrid

• Valentino Volonghi, CTO of AdRoll

Moderator:

• Grant Miller, CEO of Replicated

This was published on Nov. 29, 2018.