Briefing: Information Management Best Practices: Annual Product Satisfaction Scorecard Gives Enterprise Buyers An Evaluation Tool

This Briefing presents Outsell's first annual buyer satisfaction ratings for vendors of information products for the enterprise. With a multitude of look-alike product choices and less time in which to make buying decisions, this Briefing will help buyers add satisfaction ratings to their essential decision-making criteria. We surveyed close to 600 enterprise buyers from the corporate and government sectors for their ratings of products on four main criteria: depth/breadth of content; fair pricing; ease of doing business with the vendor; and whether they would recommend the product to others. Overall results show that users are satisfied, but not 'very satisfied,' with the vendors they do business with. Specifically, vendors could do a better job fulfilling buyers' business requirements: pricing, packaging, service, and support. Key drivers of overall satisfaction are value for price, and service and support for complex enterprise requirements. Overall winners are not the traditional enterprise content players; rather, they are the consumer-oriented companies like Amazon and Barnes & Noble that have translated ease of use to the enterprise, and value-for-price successes from government agencies like DTIC and CISTI. The Briefing includes further breakdowns by buyer satisfaction with key attributes: product loyalty, breadth and depth of content, pricing, and ease of doing business. For enterprise information managers, the Briefing includes Outsell's list of Imperatives for Information Managers, with specific ways to incorporate satisfaction metrics in negotiations with vendors.