It’s no longer about “Best of Breed”

Remember “Best of Breed”? Organizations would spend inordinate amounts of time on RFPs, bake offs and reviewing piles of research white papers to identify the best application for a specific task. Those were the days when applications did one thing and the IT department held power over decisions. How times have changed. Best of breed has given way to integrated SaaS-deployed applications driven by business needs. Among our end-user clients we’ve seen an increase in inquiries from business managers and their questions always start with how to solve a problem rather than “what’s the best application.” These buyers want it to work, be integrated, and not cause trouble. I actually had one client tell me they wanted an application that doesn’t force them to go to their IT department for help. This manager wanted a cloud solution in large part so they could call the vendor or a consultant if they needed changes. For vendors, being the best is not necessarily as important as being the easiest.