Buy a Raspberry Pi
19 Jan 2025 » Opinion
I was thinking about what I could write in my first post of 2025 when I remembered something I had seen with some customers. This post is my point of view of a decision I have witnessed or heard more often than what I would have initially expected: big corporations purchasing a license for an expensive enterprise tool, only to have it sitting on a virtual shelf, unused.
Start with the why
As you know, I am a big proponent of “starting with the why”. In a corporate environment, you should always begin with the requirements. Sometimes it will be the business team that wants to improve their processes or access new capabilities. In other cases, it is the IT team trying to increase productivity or reduce costs. But, in all cases, there should be a clear goal to achieve with the new tool.
Conversely, if there is no reason to buy this new technology, just do not do it.
Sales
Some people may think that my previous statement will not be liked by the sales team, but my experience shows that it is the contrary. I have only seen one case where the sales representative sold a bunch of licenses to a well-known company, knowing that this company did not need these licenses.
Good sales representatives want to sell a license for the long run. Otherwise, their sales commission takes an important hit if the customer does not renew. Because, let’s face it: if you convince them now to buy a license that they do not need, sooner or later they will realize it and will cancel it. On the other hand, if the customer is happy with the tool, they will renew it year after year.
ROI
One of my coworkers told me a few weeks ago about a conversation he had with one of his customers, a big US bank. The stakeholder was casually mentioning to him how they had measurements that showed how much money they were making from their Adobe investments. I do not remember the exact details, but the return was a two-digit multiplier. In other words, for every dollar spent on Adobe licenses and services, they were making more than 10x.
This is the best indicator that an investment is profitable and that the client will want to renew. This is music to sales representatives’ ears: they know that they will keep on getting their juicy commissions every year, as the customer is more than happy.
Ideally, all big corporations should be calculating the Return On Investment (ROI) of their IT investments, although this is not very common. I understand that it is difficult to evaluate the return. However, those of us coming from the Adobe Analytics world know the power of attribution. By using similar techniques, you can come up with an estimate.
This point also brings me to another one when calculating this ROI. You should not only include the profit of your marketing activities delivered through Adobe products but also the efficiencies. For example, the FTEs that you are saving, the cloud solutions you can decommission, any other tools that you can stop paying…
And the Raspberry Pi?
I am glad that you asked!
My point is that, if you just want to play with technology, you should buy a Raspberry Pi. It is inexpensive and there are plenty of tutorials on its uses. Only when you have a clear reason to buy expensive technology, go ahead and do it.
Photo by Jainath Ponnala on Unsplash