Right-sized software

Amazing interview with Colin Ruskin, CEO of WorkOptima, on the topic of right-sized software.

Colin has an incredible talent at being able to distill the truth of something into a catchy and memorable tagline using spot on metaphors.

Some highlights:

• Can I actually use the software and benefit from it?
• Floors versus software that grows with you
• All features all the time, but license it at the per-user
• Enterprise drama and enterprise mindset which is not really trying to sell to the SMB market and is really trying to break into the SMB market because they ran out of customers in the enterprise market.
• How to evaluate software
• What do you need to do in order to make it work for your transaction?
• Far too few product managers are on sales calls interacting directly with customers

• Every software company is behind on features the customers are asking for. Iceberg situation. Millions lines of code that no one sees and does not appreciate. You need to really be on top of it and prioritize fixing the items below the water in addition to the above the water items which are the features the customers want.

• A lot of companies have acquired software companies. They have failed to keep the software developers. They have lost the knowledgebase about how this thing does what it does. Huge resistance to changing, updating the code.
• What is this vendors real story? Who is this vendor actually focused on taking care of?

• Exit strategy from software. Who owns the data and how are you getting it out? When you say goodbye, how are you going to get out of that system? Will you ever want this thing 20 years in the future?

• Who really OWNS the content?

Are they in it for the long game or are they in it for the transaction? They are very focused on the stock market, revenue recognition model. They are so focused on stock price manipulation. They have completely lost track of and lost focus on the actual goal. Try to understand the company and management is behind the product.

4/27/2022