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G2 Crowd Wants to Crowdsource Enterprise Software Reviews (Video)
All reviews are opinions. In theory, they are based on a reviewer's careful test of the product. But what about enterprise software? How can a reviewer do a real-world test of a CRM program designed to run on dozens or hundreds of workstations and to be used by dozens or hundreds of people? The idea behind G2 Crowd is crowdsourcing. Not just any old crowd, but people who use or administer enterprise software as part of their jobs. In other words, experts -- who get rewards if they supply detailed reviews. Logins require a LinkedIn identity in order to prevent bogus reviews. Will G2 Crowd work? It's still in beta, and this Slashdot interview is one of the first times it has been shown to the public, in part because our interviewee, co-founder Matt Gorniak, is a long-time Slashdot reader. So what do you think? Is this a good idea? Is their business model viable? Matt sounds nervous in this interview not only because he's not a PR pro, but also because he's anxiously waiting to see what you (yes, you) think of G2 Crowd, a business he and the rest of the company's management team hope is not only viable but really takes off.
And fuck you
Wait a moment, what happens if I write a scathingly honest review that then costs me job opportunities because it's connected to LinkedIn? Or what if I write falsely glowing reviews in order to bulk up my apparent knowledge of a product in order to get a job? How is this going to effect the job market, and is subject to gaming or abuse? What if my review makes me liable for legal action by the company whose software I review? I'm just a contracting work from home Windows admin, I can't afford to have my LinkedIn screwed with. - HEX
Horror & SciFi Erotic Nudes
But I hope he's researched the idea rather more thoroughly than the summary suggests. /. 'experts' when you're already on the launchpad.
It's a bit late to consult the
Probably more a slashvert than anything else, then.
Hard to see the added value over existing sources of information...especially since giving an non-AC, unvarnished review via LinkedIn of how you screwed-up your latest sf.com, SAP, whatever implementation is hardly going to endear you to your bosess, peers, support team, vendor/support provider etc.
Maybe they'll twin this with a job-seeking service?
It won't work mainly because the people they're asking to review the software are in positions where good relations with the vendor are important. Their employer won't allow them to bad-mouth their vendors because that can impact contract terms the next time the employer has to negotiate licenses. And the requirement for a LinkedIn profile means there's no way to post a review without the vendor knowing exactly which customer has admins who think their offering is crud.
Remember, when customers are saying that there's major problems with a product, to the vendor the problem isn't that there's major problems with the product, it's that customers are saying their are. So the vendor will proceed to fix the problem: they'll go after the customers who're saying bad things to make them shut up.
How on earth is this any less susceptible to astroturfing? Linked-in like every other form of social media has large numbers of fake accounts that are available as shill accounts. Has anyone thought this through at any appreciable level? Most enterprise management software has requirements that you either go through a sales team to get an evaluation or often times has license restrictions that prevent you from freely discussing and or bench marking it without prior approval. The only way to get approval is to have results that are for all intents and purposes written by the company themselves.
Even if you don't have to worry about license issues for reviews you still have to worry about the logistical issues of implementing enterprise management software tools. These tools often involve dedicated architects, consultants that get paid hundreds of dollars per hours for months on end, dedicated SQL servers and months of exclusive staff time in order to implement correctly. Implementing a tool like this correctly easily runs into the tens of thousands of dollars on the small side and multi-million dollar budgets are common. Dedicated servers are required that can easily cost tens of thousands dollars just in hardware, never mind license costs for things like SQL server licensing and maintenance. The idea that someone who doesn't have a clue could possibly provide a meaningful review of an enterprise management product is as absurd as expecting a freshly minted college grad to work as an enterprise architect.
The idea that you can install an enterprise management tool and run a review like you can the latest version of a game shows me that the people proposing this have absolutely no experience actually doing this. This is why white papers are written, because people sink these costs into real world projects and write up about their experiences and lessons learned. You want a review of a product, find the white paper, or surf the forums for vendors product. I'm sorry, but this has got to be the dumbest idea I have ever seen submitted to Slashdot.
I remember a place which offered trusted, crowd-sourced reviews of enterprise products by "people who use or administer enterprise software as part of their jobs" ... it was called Usenet.
The relentless advertisers invaded Usenet, they have invaded Slashdot (this topic offered as Exhibit A), they invaded TripAdvisor and they will invade this new website (if anybody is insane enough to invest in starting it up).
Now excuse me while I go back to my rocking chair and yell at the kids on my lawn.
Deltek time and expense tracking software...
But it takes time and effort to write reviews, with more time required to write an unfavorable review (same holds true for peer review of articles, which is one reason why I declined the opportunity to review a journal article today...) A really good system would have some means to evaluate and weight well written reviews. (That's a characteristic that's probably missing from Slashdot's scoring criteria.)
I work as enterprise architect for a large financial organisation. Reviews of software done with this model are useless. Why ?
- Products are chosen to answer business needs, depending of the industry, the localization, other products in the organization, the same software can be rated 5 or 0. ...
- The only differences between "regular" software and "enterprise" software are integration capabilities and support. Support means not only troubleshooting but capacity to take the blame when things are going south
- In large organization, software are tools. They are only to support process. The value is not from the tool but how you use it.
I don't see how such site can be useful to my daily work ...
The largest employers forbid employees from posting "official" reviews. The largest software vendors forbid *anyone* from posting performance reviews.
Other than that, great idea!
All ideas^H^H^H^H^Hprocesses in this post are Patent Pending. (as well as the process of patenting all postings)
"If It Looks Like a Cow, Swims Like a Dolphin and Quacks Like a Duck, It Must Be Enterprise Software" -- http://www.subtraction.com/2007/10/19/if-it-looks-
and http://37signals.com/svn/posts/669-why-enterprise-software-sucks
I've worked in small and large enterprises with lots of "enterprise software" the last 30 yrs.
* All "enterprise software" sucks. ALL OF THEM.
* I can't think of 1 product that does what we were sold on features. Sure, the tools "could" perform everything we were sold with 20x more fees for consultants to make that happen.
* Never buy anything from Oracle except the RDBMS and only buy that if absolutely necessary.
A few small enterprise products actually do what they claim, but those are very specialized and of limited use for a wider public.
More and more, enterprises should learn that contributing to F/LOSS makes more sense over the long-term. It works best for governments and large companies, of that, I am absolutely positive. For small and medium-sized companies, it is less clear if F/LOSS makes business sense or not.
Enterprise Software is a different animal, so to speak. The software itself does what it's supposed to do but your success with it boils down to a few key areas:
1) Choosing the right ERP solution that fits your needs. I can't tell you how many square-peg-round-hole solutions there are out there.
2) Choosing a good implementer. ERP products are nearly infinitely configurable and every configuration requires analysis and decision making. Some of the decisions you make can be difficult or nearly impossible to undo once the product is live. Evaluating your implementation parter is critical to the success of the project. In my experience, stay away from "Big Four" companies. They will stack the team full of college kids with little more than a few training courses and no real world experience. You'll get a few experienced one that get most of the client face time but the majority of them will be training on your nickel.
These are the things that determine the success of your implementation, not the software itself. So having a bunch of people saying "SAP sucks" isn't very helpful. The software works...if it sucks it's most likely because something went wrong with #1 or #2 above.
This was getting interesting until I red: "Logins require a LinkedIn identity"
No, thanks.
Yeah, right, like I'm going to associate my review with my LinkedIn account to tell the world my thoughts of the system I have to run day to day... bet the vendor I also have to deal with day to day will love that and I'm sure they'll make my life super swell afterwards... Using LinkedIn for verification is stupid, most reviews are going to be bad (let's face it, most of this software sucks due to poor competition) so vendors are going to pressure any employer who has an employee who gives negative reviews.