Jim Holincheck

Jason Averbrook has a great post on the Knowledge Infusion Center of Excellence blog called "What to learn from Shootouts and Battles of Software Vendors..".  For those not aware, the HR Technology Conference does these shootouts/battles each year where typically three or four vendors square off against each other to demonstrate three or four short scripted scenarios.  In most cases, the audience gets to vote for which vendor they thought was best in each scenario.  At the end of the session, the audience gets to see who they voted for as the best vendor (for each scenario and in aggregate).  Afterwards, the winning vendor often announces in a press release that they won the shootout/battle.  Jason does an excellent job discussing the dangers of using this kind of venue to choose a vendor.  I will not rehash it here.

As a history lesson, the first shootouts, at least to my knowledge, were done at the Andersen Consulting Software Spectacular shows in the 1990s.  My old boss, Brian Sommer (see his blogs Software Safari and Services Safari), came up with the idea (Brian please correct me if I am wrong).  We did it a little bit different from how Bill Kutik has set up the ones at the HR Technology Conference.  We created scripted scenarios (five or six).  Instead of having everyone on a main stage, we had breakout rooms for each vendor (usually five or six vendors).  We would give each vendor thirty minutes to demonstrate each scenario.  We scheduled the scenarios so that an attendee could go to all of the scenarios for one vendor or go to see the same scenario from each vendor.  We also had proctors in each room to make sure that the vendors stayed to the script.  Our goal was to create a one-of-a-kind educational opportunity (to see the same scripted scenarios for five or six vendors in a half a day to a day) for our attendees.

Now that you know my experience with this in the past and present, I thought I would put forth my suggestions for shootouts/battles in the future at the HR Technology Conference (or any other conference that has them — and I have mentioned them to Bill in the past):

• Do not have the CEOs drive the demonstration.  I think having a short introduction by a vendor CEO where he/she can give the elevator pitch about the company is a good thing.  However, I think the experts, rather than the CEO, will typically provide more information to customers
• Do the shootout on the show floor.  This combines the Software Spectacular approach with the HR Technology Conference approach to some extent.  I would allow any vendor who wants to participate to do a scenario in their booth (why limit it to three or four vendors?).  I would give each vendor 30 minutes to demonstrate the scenario.  I would publish the schedule of scenarios as another track at the conference.  There is not as much theater to this approach, but I think it increases the educational opportunity for attendees
• Get rid of the scoring.  The Lawson/Oracle/Workday battle this year was not scored.  I believe it was highly attended (I was not able to attend) and attendees still got to learn a lot about the vendors and the products.  Again, the scoring makes for great theater (and press releases), but it adds nothing to the educational value for attendees in my opinion

What do you think?   Do you like the shootouts/battles as they are?  Do you like my suggestions for improvement ?  What would you like to see at a conference?