The Sweet Spot

Just like an athlete knows the “sweet spot” of his/her equipment, software vendors like PAS know the advantage of a “suite spot” for their software products.

Think of the tennis racquet. 

Every racquet has three different sweet spots, but in a general sense, the sweet spot is the area of the string bed that produces the best combination of feel and power. The most powerful spot on the string bed is that with the greatest coefficient of restitution. Tennis racquet research is serious business – for both vendors and academic researchers alike.

Back to software…

The vendors in our industry know their “sweet spot” too – as the most powerful combination of software functions with the greatest coefficient of customer-interest-to-software-purchase.  It might not be studied quite as thoroughly as the tennis racquet, but it is one of the fundamental principles of our four P’s of marketing.

In this case, I mean the “P” for “Packaging”.

In the context of the software suite, software packaging refers to the bundling together of multiple software functions, programs or options into a single market offering.

Although any vendor can offer various functions, programs or options at a single price to the customer, the advantage clearly lies with the vendor who has actually built the various functions and options into a single coherent software program from the ground up.

Like “plug ‘n play” is a huge advantage to the consumer of PC peripherals, so are pre-integrated software functions.

This seems obvious, but not all customers understand this to be true.

By definition, an integrated software suite means a lower life-cycle cost to the customer. 

Imagine if I buy the best-in-breed control loop performance tool from one vendor, a best-in-breed alarm management solution from another, and a best-in-breed control system configuration tool from another…  I may think I am getting the true “best” solution at the “lowest” cost today, but shortly after purchase I would begin to see:

• Additional staff training costs for each vendor’s interface (with an accompanying lower efficiency)

• Additional integration costs between modules (assuming the different vendors I selected even keep their systems current to the underlying infrastructure at or around the same time!)

• Missed benefits as the various functions are made available with additional interoperability functions by new developments down the road (and if you thought integrating today's functions was a challenge, just try aligning various vendor roadmaps so everything keeps working together!)

Over the years I’ve seen it happen time and again – a customer gets so focused on comparing the features and functions of all the elements that they want to buy today that they completely forget to look ahead… at life-cycle costs, staff efficiencies, new benefits from product evolution, and their own future business needs.

It is pretty common knowledge among vendors that astute customers make their purchase decisions looking at three key elements:

1)     features and functions available today

2)     integration & interoperability of the required features and functions

3)     software investment in BOTH of the above by the vendor

The real sweet spot is not the “sweet deal” of today, but the “suite strategy” for tomorrow.

Cobbling together “best-in-breed” is not the best solution after all.... and that’s why we at PAS make such great investments in getting it right from the ground up.

We’re far from perfect, but we sure have a great start in our AMO-Rt product as a suite of applications resident in our PlantState Suite infrastructure.