Selling software into banks
ReadSoft, Synopsys, Puppet and GitHub · 2000 to 2005 and 2014 to 2018
Situation
Software companies sell into banks without knowing how a bank buys: who decides, what risk and procurement will ask, and why a deal that looks won stalls for a year. I've sat on both sides of that table.
What I did
At ReadSoft, in Australia and the UK, I sold and then implemented document automation for HBOS, ING, ANZ and AMP, integrated with SAP and Oracle: tenders, process redesign and project management, which teaches you to sell only what you'll have to make work. Later, through Seamus Birch Solutions, I brought the enterprise buyer's view to three software companies: product features and roadmaps, customer panels and market research, sales and marketing materials, keynotes at their sales conferences, and the banking security, compliance and regulatory answers. For Puppet, that included the "Security and Compliance in an Agile World" panel at PuppetConf 2016 and the talk "Controlled Evolution with Puppet and AWS". For GitHub, I was the technical advisor on the white paper "Development Workflow for Data Scientists".
Result
Positioning and roadmaps written from the buyer's side, and vendors who could explain to a bank's risk, security and procurement people why their product belonged inside the controls.
What it took
Having bought the products as a bank, and having answered to the auditors afterwards.