Keynoting UNIT4 and CODA customer gigs

This coming week – weather permitting – I’m the opening act for UNIT4′s upcoming Agresso/CODA customer conferences in Birmingham.  I say opening act as I will be delivering a very short address followed by some fun stuff.

When UNIT4 contacted me about this late last year I was sceptical. Howlett addressing a customer conference? How could that happen without me ending up looking like some lame shill or it being a total mess? It’s hard but then I laid out a set of conditions under which I would agree to the arrangement. In condensed form I said that I wanted:

1. Customers first
2. No PowerPoint
3. Limited corporate chest thumping
4. No teleprompters

Surprisingly (at least to me) the company agreed with every element of the proposal. There is one concession and that’s a short video segment on something the company plans to announce. We can all live with that.

The last few weeks I’ve been compiling the opening address, Q&A for UNIT4 top management plus Q&A for customers. Yes, we’ve run some ragged rehearsal stuff over the phone. That’s largely to ensure everyone understands what’s going on and to make sure management know what to concentrate upon. That exercise is especially important for customers who are rarely trained in the art of public speaking. How do you get over that and yet still communicate a coherent message?

We’re stepping way over the edge of what you’d usually see at this type of event. In fact this will be the first customer conference I have attended where the company’s voice almost goes on mute. But not quite. Instead of a series of folk coming up and blahing away, we’re holding a set of conversations on stage almost like you were sitting over coffee with friends and colleagues. Our US colleagues call these a ‘fireside chat.’ The only difference is that this will be observed by about 1,000 of UNIT4s closest friends. That way, the stress to customers is minimised and, hopefully, the flow of questions will make for a meaningful conversation.

The only constraint is time. People come to these events to learn and while there is always a central address, it has to keep to time so they get best use of their time. To that end I have the unenviable job of making sure that happens – somehow – even if that means cutting off a speaker.

I am really looking forward to this. UNIT4 management has been incredibly supportive. They’ve hardly touched any of my prepared remarks, if anything I’d say they’ve added considerable value by helping me find points this group will find interesting. The pre-conference calls with customers have been terrific. All are absolutely up for this format.

As a customer/buyer advocate, I am looking forward to seeing how well this format works. I can imagine some of my media colleagues looking askance but then I hope they will see beyond the need for vendor hype and gain insight into what at least one vendor is delivering in the real world and what this means for customers.

As a taster, this from my planned presso. It will no doubt change but should give you a flavour of what I have in mind:

I am not tied to any particular vendor and always say the same thing: you can buy my time as UNIT4 is doing today, but you cannot buy my opinion. I spend my life pounding on vendors in an effort to get the best for customers. That makes this engagement really exciting for me and hopefully interesting for you. At least that’s the theory!…

…No-one is going to pretend that life is easy. If you are in public sector then you already know how difficult it is making ends meet while delivering services your customers need. You’ll have seen recent news that local authorities are actively cutting pay. I don’t doubt we’ll see more of those headlines. This morning’s conversations will address how you can invest smarter. If you are in the private sector then you also know that keeping ahead of the market while wrestling with a dwindling IT budget is no fun. We’ll address that as well.

Wish the customers well. They have earned the right to celebrate their successes.