The Internet has eliminated any excuses for not having access to the information that individuals need to make informed buying decisions about products and/or services. However, providing easy, ready insight that quickly and easily compares IT infrastructure solutions… well, let’s just say Google does not address that challenge. Using DCIG and its Competitive Intelligence Suite, organizations get the tools and services they need to first aggregate research on IT infrastructure solutions and then quickly and easily generate reports that compare product features and services.
DCIG regularly speaks with individuals in organizations that research IT infrastructure solutions. For instance, vendors want to know what features that IT products do and do not support. Likewise, companies, prior to buying IT products or services, may independently research them to determine which features they offer and which one best aligns with their needs.
Many assume this research is a straightforward process but the devil is in the details. The reality is that the processes employed to do the research and even the resulting research is often deeply flawed as research is the result of ad hoc data collection processes . Even assuming one follows a stringent data collection process, the methodologies available for distributing the data to those who need it are problematic at best. Consider:
- Prior to starting the product research, one must ask the right questions. Developing a list of questions to evaluate a product or service can take hours, days, or even weeks depending on the complexity of the environment into which the product is being deployed. Further, one must take the time to carefully word each question to obtain the desired response.
- Create answers to the questions. While you may construct all questions with short, fill-in-the-blank answers, it is better to create questions with “yes-no” or “multiple-choice” responses. These questions create objective evaluation criteria, remove subjectivity, and expedite product evaluations. However, this process can again take hours, days, or weeks to complete.
- Do the product research. Once the survey is complete, companies move to the research stage which they tackle in one or more ways. They may send out surveys for vendors to complete. They may do the research in house. They may hire consultants. They may perform each of these tasks. Again, hours, days, or weeks may go by while research is done.
- Aggregating, analyzing, and distributing the data. Organizations often create and store this research in Microsoft Excel or Word documents and then distribute the research via email. These tools create data silos with the research inaccessible to those in the organization who most need it.
Perhaps the worst part of this process is that organizations rarely have the time to thoroughly complete any stage of the research. Even should they do so, few if any organization has a mechanism to distribute the research and make it accessible to organizations that need it. As a result, they rely upon inaccurate and/or incomplete data when making complex decisions or, if they do go through this entire research and analysis process to make the “best” decision, their window of opportunity to act on the opportunity may have passed.
DCIG, using its Competitive Intelligence Suite and accompanying services. changes this process. DCIG expedites and simplifies the survey creation, the research, and the distribution of the data. It does so in the following ways.
- DCIG offers pre-existing research for IT infrastructure products that companies commonly evaluate and buy. This include cloud data protection, all-flash arrays, and hyperconverged infrastructure, among others.
- Organizations can leverage DCIG’s research and augment it with data on IT infrastructure solutions that they have collected.
- The data is put in a central database and made available via a web browser which only individuals in their organization can access anytime and anywhere. Then, using DCIG’s visualization tool, they can simply create multiple views into the data that compare product features.
In today’s world, organizations want instant access to information that they want and need to make better decisions. While the Internet certainly grants organizations “instant” access to information, the abilities to easily compare, analyze, and distribute that information do not come along for the ride.
DCIG and its Competitive Intelligence Suite provide organizations with the tools and services they need to aggregate data and create meaningful reports that compare features on IT infrastructure solutions. Providing preexisting questions, answers, and research on many technology topics, organizations receive both the means to accelerate their research and then the flexibility for anyone in the organization to access the data and generate the reports they need anywhere at any time.