Customers want complexity and confusion. Right?

We all know this is not the case but sometimes it feels that it is overly complicated for enterprises to buy and consume ICT.

I’ve spent quite a lot of time listening to customers recently. Speaking to our customers is one of the best parts of my job. They are incredibly busy people and have very little time but the value of these conversations is priceless. The value comes from not only listening to what they have to say but also then being able to challenge each other on a range of issues.

One conversation that comes up regularly is how the CIO role is changing. The lines of business within today’s enterprises are rightly demanding that their organisation buys and consumes IT differently. And it is the CIO who’s got to make it all work with a “make it flexible, make it fit” approach. So how does a service provider help here?

The challenge of answering this question triggered some in-depth conversations with customers and analysts across Europe to understand what’s really being demanded from service providers today.

Their answer? Simplicity.

The two things that constantly came up were: “I want to consume my IT needs on my terms. And keep it simple” and “I want to easily understand the services I’m buying.”

Far too often our market bamboozles with complex terms and techno-babble when customers want the opposite: a service provider that challenges complexity and tells a story that is easy to understand.

Delving deeper into what CIOs want we heard that of course you should make buying services easier. But they added; you must also give me much more in terms of control plus deliver a deeper business understanding and product expertise.

Difference really matters too. I was struck with how customers despair: “Everyone talks and looks the same in this market. Don’t confuse me.”

Some we spoke to went much further, saying: “Service support is important but I want my partner to empower me.” And this links to what the wider IT team is also telling us: “For now all I want is to keep up with my internal demands.”

Taking on board this kind of customer feedback should boost change in any services business. And hopefully we are heading in the right direction.

For example, we had already moved from promoting dozens of products and 14 services to our enterprise customers to nine services across networking, communications and IT. This new customer feedback means we’ve simplified further. Now we have just seven services which we call our Colt Optimum services.

For me Optimum is about delivering advantage and performance for our customers using clever combinations of technology, commercial and service solutions.

It’s about finding the strongest differentiators around skills, capabilities and resources, while always being focused on talking about end benefits and demonstrating we know service performance is as important as technology for our CIO customers.

The experience for our customers? Well, it’s the experience of working with a service provider that’s passionate in taking away complexity, is passionate about helping customers take control and passionate about creating advanced business performance and solutions that best fit their demands.

The industry is definitely embracing a new way of buying and consuming IT. We are excited to be part of this trend. Challenge or opportunity to do things differently? What do you think?