In the heady days of the technology business, vendors could push products and leave CIOs to figure out how to make those products deliver business value. Nowadays, CIOs are more demanding. They want vendors to sell them solutions, not products. They want vendors to make different products work together, to customize products to their business and to augment their products with professional services. As a result, every major technology vendor is scrambling to improve its capability to design and deliver solutions.

But getting solutions right is difficult for vendors that are used to thinking in terms of products. In my work with technology companies, I find that few vendors get their approach to solutions right. For CIOs, choosing vendors that understand how to deliver solutions with value can spell the difference between the success and failure of a project.

Potholes on the Road to IT Value

Here are some common pitfalls that CIOs should watch out for in evaluating vendor solutions.

The "One-Size-Fits-All" Solution: A solution, by definition, needs to be tailored to the customer’s business. Technology vendors that pay lip service to customization often end up creating one-size-fits-all solutions that appeal to nobody in particular. Consider a vertical market like financial services. Within that market segment there are many subsegments, such as regional commercial banks, mutual fund companies, investment banks and hedge fund companies. Those subsegments may have very different business processes, legacy IT infrastructures and end-customer needs.

CIOs should be wary of vendors that tout generic industry solutions. They should ask for solutions that are customized for their industry subsegment. They should also demand that vendors provide references from clients whose business context is sufficiently similar to their own.

The "Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing" Solution: If you were ever forced to wear hand-me-down clothes that were too big for you, you will understand this problem. Technology vendors typically design their solutions for large enterprise customers. Most vendors believe that more features and services can never hurt customers, so they try to shoehorn solutions that are optimized for large enterprises into the small and medium business (SMB) market. As a result, SMB customers are forced to buy feature-laden, complex products and services.

If you’re a CIO at a small or midsize company, a good test of this problem is to examine the differences between the "enterprise version" and the "SMB version" of a solution, to see if you’re being sold an overengineered solution in disguise. Also, ask vendors if they have a dedicated sales, partner and support channel for SMB customers. You’ll get little attention from "trophy hunters" who are more interested in big game than in a small fry.