John Honovich has a great post on whether you can believe manufacturers’ claims or not. While I am a service provider and my comments will fall under this same scrutiny, I definitely think the answer to this is generally “not without some proof or evidence”.
Take a couple of recent press releases in the industry as an example. I won’t name names to protect the “innocent”, but if you read the major trade magazines or follow the press releases some of the players in the market issue, you’ll have seen these (or a dozen just like them).
The first announces the acquisition by Company A (a medium sized video provider with decent traction in a specific retail segment) of Company B (a tiny, struggling video provider with a small customer base) and declares the result “a combination that dominates the specific retail segment”. Last time I checked, taking a company with few meaningful customers and adding it to one with decent traction but that is no where near the leader in a space doesn’t yield a dominate anything. Unless a potential prospect knew both of these companies in detail, they would not have a way to judge the validity of the claim.
The second announcement was a partnership announcement between a video provider and a security company. The video provider (whose press release announced the deal) declared that part of the rationale was the provider’s most advanced industry leading point of sale integration capabilities. In this case the industry leading capability apparently comes from a resold text overlay solution that just about everyone in the industry can do. Again, unless a prospect knew enough about POS integration in general, and what this company offers specifically, they could not effectively evaluate the claim.
Is any of this illegal or unethical or even a little bit wrong? I don’t think so – marketers will spin and position and make statements that create a positive view of a company and its capabilities, even if they are sometimes a little bit ahead of the company’s ability to deliver. Having said that, it makes it very difficult for end-users to understand what a company can really offer and how it differentiates itself from the competition.
It also makes it difficult for service providers to create awareness and educate the market on real advantages, as they have to cut through a lot of the noise that other vendors create with claims that aren’t really substantiated.
The answer to all of this is to look for and demand evidence to support a vendor’s claim (and awards don’t count, as John mentions) If a vendor says it has the most advanced POS integration, have them show you it in production with a major customer and explain why it is different. If a vendor says that they dominate a specific market, have them tell you how many customers they have relative to the competition and give you individual references that you can check. If a vendor says that their solution has a powerful return on investment, have them explain who got it and how it was derived.
It’s easy to sound great when they get to write their own bios – it’s a little more challenging when they have to back it up with facts.