A Tale of Two Firms

Rarely am I presented with such a clear picture of the disparate thought patterns that drive IT departments and their thinking.

We have been actively engaged in pursuing large law firms for over one year.   From the outside looking in, they are very similar firms--in the number of attorneys and number of locations. But the similarities end there.

Firm "One" has just signed a multi-year enterprise-wide agreement with Cypress to have us provide Unified Communications and Data Networking globally. We will be replacing an existing non-Nortel PBX infrastructure with our C4 IP Platform, and we will be providing a private data network solution. This firm will be taking advantage of the full suite of UC features, such as presence, chat, collaboration, unified messaging and mobility. This firm approached the evaluation of the hosted UC or UCaaS solution in a highly collaborative constructive and open manner, evaluating, learning and educating all at the same time over an eighteen-month period, leading to the ultimate decision point. At every step along the way there has been open-mindedness to new thinking and a desire to do what is best for the firm, its partners and employees. In short, I would have to describe it as one of the most pleasant sales experiences of my professional career. Look for us to announce this new Cypress relationship shortly.

Firm "Two" has been about as closed-minded and un-collaborative as I can imagine any potential business relationship being.  We have been engaged with Firm "Two" for the exact same period of time as Firm "One" except instead of being pleasant it's been much more like the March from Bataan - long, arduous, painful and destined to end badly.  And it's not that these are bad people or that they have deliberately tried to be difficult. On the contrary, the reason we probably have stayed engaged so long is that there has been the cordial nature of the relationship and at moments along the way glimmers of hope. But this organization is very set in its ways and beliefs; and those ways and beliefs do not align with the view of "things are better in the cloud" and that "UCaaS is the most efficient way to deliver the technology".  And so it has been a constant series of "Cypress proposing solutions" and Firm "Two" finding the reasons why those solutions won't work for the firm. Not because they won't work - just because they don't want it to work. It's not the way they do things.

That's a hard lesson for us to take home - especially when we so passionately believe in what we do and why it is the right solution and then have that belief validated by a significant new customer relationship. But no matter how right what we do may be, it's not right for everyone. At the end of the day - the enterprise needs to make decisions that make it most comfortable - and to our great chagrin - sometimes that's not the "Cypress way".