Stakeholder Centricity: The Metrics That Count

As the demand for information technology (IT) — where the IT department was the primary buyer — is evolving to a demand for business technology (BT) — where business departments and business objectives are substantially more important — technology providers need to adjust the metrics they use to prove the value of their solutions and services to buyers. In this changing buyer structure, sales and marketing executives are continually challenged by two vital questions: What are the most important metrics to use and how does their importance change as the relationship progresses from initial evaluation to funding approval? Forrester surveyed 172 IT and business technology buyers to get deeper insight into their respective demand for specific types of metrics, as well as their satisfaction with the metrics that their providers currently supply. The results clearly indicate that IT and business units have different requirements, that there are significant differences between "best" and "worst" provider practices, and that technical metrics lag far behind business metrics as the relationship changes from "show-and-tell" to "show me the money."