- Customer perception: we are "engineers for hire" and "requirements takers" as opposed to a partner who understand the business needs and can help drive a solution and tell a client what they SHOULD be doing (instead of having them tell us what to do, then go build it).
- Way too complex to do business with: takes too long and everything has to be built/customized (even demos). The GUI is losing ground to competition: ugly tables vs sleeker designs that are MUCH easier to use. I've heard the comment, "Company X has a real solution that can go live in 3 months for a few hundred grand. If I asked you to do it, it would've taken a year and millions of dollars." The reality is, it was very hard to argue this point.
- My fear is the future of the marketplace: we are finding out what worked 10 years ago will not work over the next 5 years. We are seeing more competition with much easier-to-deploy solutions at fractions of the cost. Customers are also seeing more viable, better, and quicker alternatives. Other companies are brining network engineers who truly understand the business and are telling customers what they need as opposed to what they want (this goes back to my first point). The pressure is not subsiding, and unless we adapt to this change we may find ourselves on the shorter end of these opportunities, especially in existing accounts (partly because the customer becomes familiar with us and can now compare our platform/way we do business to other companies').
