Lousy Backlog? Sell with Interesting Assertions.
September 19, 2016
If you are struggling to fill the sales pipeline, you will feel some pressure. If you really need to make sales, marketing collateral may be an easy weapon to seize.
I read “Examples of False Claims about Self-Service Analytics.” The write up singles out interesting sales assertions and offers them up in a listicle. I loved the write up. I lack the energy to sift through the slices of baloney in my enterprise search files. Therefore, let’s highlight the work the brave person who singled out eight vendors’ marketing statements as containing what the author called “false claims.” Personally I think each of these claims is probably rock solid when viewed from the point of view of the vendors’ legal advisers.
Here are three examples of false claims about self service analytics. (For the other five, consult the article cited in the preceding paragraph.) Keep in mind that I find these statements as good as the gold for sale in the local grocery in Harrod’s Creek. Come to think of it the gold is foil wrapped around a lousy piece of ersatz chocolate. But gold is gold sort of.
Example 1 from Information Builders. Information Builders loves New York. The company delivers “integrated solutions for data management.” Here’s the item from the article which contains a “false claim.”
Self-service BI and analytics isn’t just about giving tools to analysts; it’s about empowering every user with actionable and relevant information for confident decision-making. (link). Self-service Analytics for Everyone…Who’s Everyone? Your entire universe of employees, customers, and partners. Our WebFOCUS Business Intelligence (BI) and Analytics platform empowers people inside and outside your organization to attain insights and make better decision.
I see a subject verb agreement error. I see a semicolon which puts me on my rhetorical guard. I see the universal “everyone”. I see the fact that WebFOCUS empowers.
What’s not to like? Information Builders is repeating facts which I accept. The fact that the company is in New York enhances the credibility of the statements. Footnotes, evidence? Who needs them?
Example 2 from SAP, the outfit that delivered R3 to Westinghouse and Trex to the enterprise search market. Here’s the “false assertion” which looks as solid as a peer reviewed journal containing data related to drug trials. Remember. This quote comes from the source article. I believe absolutely whatever SAP communicates to me. Don’t you?
This tool is intended for those who need to do analysis but are not Analysts nor wish to become them.
Why study math, statistics, and related disciplines? Why get a degree? I know that I can embrace the SAP way (which is a bit like the IBM way) and crunch numbers until the cows return to my pasture in Harrod’s Creek. Who needs to worry about data integrity, sample size, threshold settings, and algorithmic sequencing? Not me. Gibraltar does not stand on such solid footing as SAP’s tool for those who eschew analysts and does not want to wake up like Kafka’s protagonist as an analyst.
Example 3 from ZoomData, a company which has caught the attention of some folks in the DC area. I love those cobblestones in Reston too.
ZoomData brings the power of self-service BI to the 99%—the non-data geeks of the world who thirst for a simple, intuitive, and collaborative way to visually interact with data to solve business problems.
To me this looks better than the stone tablets Moses hauled down from the mountain. I love the notion of non geeks who thirst for pointing and clicking. I would have expressed the idea as drink deep of data’s Empyrean spring, but I am okay with the split infinitive “to visually interact” because the statement is a fact. I tell you that it is a fact.
For the other five allegedly false assertions, please, consult the original article. I have to take a break. When my knowledge is confirmed in these brilliant assertions, I need a moment to congratulate myself on my wisdom. Wait. I am an addled goose. Maybe these examples really are hog wash? Because i live in rural Kentucky, I will step outside and seek inputs from Henrietta, my hog.
Stephen E Arnold, September 19, 2016
Comments
-
- Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive
-
