Three interesting insights on SAM tooling that we found out doing interviews

Over the past six months, we’ve been conducting a series of casual interviews, “Friendly conversation(s) on SAM tooling,” as we like to call them, to understand better the good, the bad, and the ugly when it comes to SAM tooling. We’ve spoken with people who sell them, people who buy them, and admins who use them daily. Here are three interesting insights that caught our attention.

1. It’s not about the whistles and bells. It’s about singing the right tune at the right time.

The power of a tool is not in how many features it has instead in how well it can cater to your specific needs. To my surprise, even customers from large (Fortune 500) enterprises nowadays prefer to work with boutique organizations or startups. Sure, this kind of fragmentation in your service providers makes it harder to manage. However, the “better than expected” results are going to make it worth your while.

Price is not a big motivator for large organizations, but smaller organizations will enjoy a lower entry point.

2. Underwater fish don’t stink.

Many organizations have already invested in expensive tools, and speaking with some of the administrators of these tools, the reviews are not always great. Some of these tools solve some of the significant business issues. However, they still fall short of delivering on others which generates a high load of additional work in developing workarounds. Typically this work involves finding solutions internally using whatever resources you can, generating some hidden costs. 

Making one significant initial investment in a tool makes organizations reluctant to invest in additional tooling. It’s a difficult conversation and a challenging business case (there’s some stigma around this topic). At the end of the day, the tool works fine as long as the promised results are delivered one way or the other.

3. Innovation is siloed

Some companies have solved different SAM issues in innovative and unique ways. It’s great to see how resourceful people can be. However, it’s sad to see how siloed these innovations are. Sure there are events where people speak about this kind of stuff, but there is much more to it than just talking. Even if not for free, sharing is still caring.

A unified platform where all these ideas can come together, materialize and grow is one of our key innovations and a fundamental pillar in our mission to commoditize SAM. The specialists we’ve spoken to so far think this is a great idea, but a challenging one.

Looking back to our early years in SAM, it’s fascinating to see that even such a traditional market can surprise you. The mindset is more pragmatic now. We’ve met many forward-thinking people who are looking ahead of the current, ready to roll up their sleeves and try out new things.

We’ll likely continue our series of talks to learn more about what you think about SAM and tooling. If you’re reading this and would like to join the conversation, drop us a line, and we’ll have a chat.