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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.
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.