In discussing vendor relations, Simon Griffiths is far from happy with Microsoft Dynamics South African management:
Microsoft is a different case. Other colleagues in the company are nearly at the stage of telling Microsoft Dynamics to get lost. So what does Dynamics lack in SA? Firstly, stable long-term management; four different heads in four years does not provide stability for partners or continuity of strategy. Secondly, I my opinion (and as I have said before), the local team are very much execution-bound, meaning that strategy, planning and decision-making gets done in Europe by people who don’t have in-depth knowledge of local conditions and market expectations. Thirdly, again in my opinion, Microsoft is too process-bound to be flexible enough when they need to be.
Moving the Titanic out the way of icebergs wasn’t easy either.
Joking aside, it is a fact of life that large vendors are difficult to deal with at the best of times. For reasons I’ve never understood, they acquire layers and layers of managers that require careful and at times tortuous navigation. At SAP for instance, I’ve been told it is easier to get sign off on a $5 million spend than it is $50,000. I can believe that.
On this occasion though it seems Microsoft hasn’t just been unlucky in its choice of senior management, it’s been downright sloppy. It won’t be the first or the last time this has happened.
I’m sure it will be a topic of discussion at the upcoming Microsoft Convergence analyst sessions. I’ll be there.
Technorati Tags: Microsoft, Microsoft Dynamics
