[Typo3-marketing] OSCOM update and opinion about consultancies

[Daniel Hinderink]

Hi Michelle and Olivier,

I am glad to find there is some discussion going on, sorry for not reacting
earlier.
> 
> Thanks for your feedback. I really appreciate your comments.
> 
> I do tend to disagree with the notion that it's a company's job to find the
> "right" consultancy. For example, there are thousands of Web design agencies
> in the world. How can one company find the "right" one? If we left it up to
> them, then we haven't done our jobs. We need to be proactive and make sure
> they "find" us. I think we need to narrow down the choices for companies by
> providing categories in the T3 consultancy database. A company does not want
> to email hundreds of T3 consultants just to find the "right" one. They don't
> have the time and we are the ones that need to be promoting T3.

I agree with Michelle. Potentially we already have a lot of info in the
database. We could easily cross-reference the consultancy and reference
tables, so that wwe could make some "find your consultancy"-wizard on the
page.

1. select country and region
2. your industry (matched from the reference-table)
3. select technical level (eCommerce, eBusiness, Backoffice-Integration...)
4. services needed (consulting, programming, grafics, hosting...)

Then the wizard would list all hits that match at least the country and the
services and show all entries in the order of their matching any other
criteria.

This would be easy to make for .com and would also allow some filters, like
consultancie without references do not get listed, consultancies not
selected for .com lack some "certification-flag" ...

> 
> Another example: T3 is being recognized in schools and universities. You
> said that you are not really into the education part. So if a school is
> looking for a T3 consultant, they could look in the database and find
> consultants that specialize in that. If a T3 consultant doesn't want to
> specialize in that, they wouldn't be listed under that category.

Exactly. The point is the specialisation is demonstrated by references in my
model wizard.

> 
> I think this would save the users who are looking for a consultant a lot of
> time and also they would be less frustrated in the process.
> 
> At my freelance company, my clients are not solely interested in costs from
> the start. We provide "custom" solutions and I cannot give them a set price
> in the beginning. If they email me and say, "How much will a T3 site cost?".
> I tell them that I need a complete description of their project and goals
> first, then I consult them on the best method to achieve this. After that, I
> can work up an accurate proposal. For my company we are concerned with the
> quality of services before cost. On the other hand, we do offer ready made
> templates for our hosting clients. Those come with a set price. Support and
> customization are extra. So I do understand your point about clients looking
> solely at cost, but you must understand that it is not always the case,
> especially with larger companies.

The same experience goes for us. We do get some price-based inquiries, but
frankly we do not invest must time in these potential customers, if we can
not convince them that solid project work is always cheaper and more
effective even in mid-term, than short term savings (that almost always bust
during the project anyway).

> 
> Also, I agree that TYPO3 is still young and that is why I said that these
> are things "far down the road", but they are still things we need to think
> about now. Daniel is doing a great job setting things up to work correctly
> now so that things will go smoothly in the future.  I just wanted to relay
> people's concerns that were shared at OSCOM. Let's not forget that TYPO3
> still does not have the name recognition of Zope, Midgard, PHPNuke and
> PostNuke, etc.(at least here in the US) even though it's been around longer
> and, in my opinion, is a better product. This is what we are trying to
> change and since consultancies are, for most companies, representatives of
> T3, we need to make sure they show T3 in a good light.

I would really like to go down this path a little further and would like to
find out why TYPO3 is so much less known in the US.
In Europe it is very obvious that the market is driven by developers: they
offer TYPO3 to their clients thus pushing it. So it would be logical to look
at their sources of information. Now in the mean time TYPO3 has pretty good
exposure in the tech-press, but I think many people came to it through
resources like sourceforge and freshmeat. Why then was the impact so much
stronger in Germany then in the US or the UK?

My guess is that both these economies have rather weak SME-sectors compared
to Germany and central Europe. In other words, the CMS market is very
upscale and sophisticated technology is somewhat reserved to these large
corporations that are catered to by Vignette et al.

So I would believe we need to communicate through the business associations
and get some exposure in the more popular press in the US and UK.


> I do like the survey and think that will help things quite a bit. I'm just
> worried if you base a consultancy on whether they pay for a listing or not,
> you aren't really looking at the quality of their services, but just on
> whether they paid some money for a listing. I'd like to think that there is
> more to a good consultant than that.

Actually I have a really strange problem with the payment idea: I don't know
what to do with the money. Kasper will surely not accept it, since he does
not want to control these entries. I don't want it either since that would
change my and everyone elses perspective for working for TYPO3.

> In the internet world, you have people paying for listings in search engines
> like Google. How many people think those companies are "good" just because
> they paid to be listed there? How many users click on their links just
> because they are listed at the top or on the side? I tend to not click on
> those links at all.
> 
> Of course, if you ask me, I'm still not sure what the best way would be to
> judge consultancies! :) I do like the idea that they should be contributing
> to T3 community in some measurable way.

My words exactly :-)

Cheers,

Daniel


-- 
TYPO3 - get.content.right

Daniel Hinderink
Marketing, Press Relations, Strategy
http://www.typo3.com