What is a Technology Matchmaker?

What is a Technology Matchmaker?

Viewpoint Analysis Ltd first coined the phrase 'Technology Matchmaker', but what exactly is a Technology Matchmaker? A Technology Matchmaker is an individual or business that sits between enterprise technology buyers and sellers, helping both IT buyers and technology vendors find their ideal partners and drive long-term success.

It's a rather unusual term, but it sums up precisely what Viewpoint Analysis does across the three key matchmaking areas - Finding New Technology, Understanding Your Buyers, and Partnership Improvement:

Finding New Technology

The technology market is crowded, and our goal is to help buyers quickly find and select the right technology to meet their needs. Unlike other businesses in similar areas, we do not work on commission or take incentives for any vendor introductions or sales - the end customer pays for all our work in this area. It means that we can help them with any requirement and we can bring ANY technology vendor to the table, not just those on our list or where we get paid the most.

We run a range of services focused on helping businesses find and select technology quickly. These include areas like:

Technology Ideas - our Technology Innovation Series is a bespoke series of vendor presentations on a particular topic or a range of different themes - all built to bring new ideas to the business or department

Shortlisting - for those who have a project in mind, our Technology Matchmaker Service provides a super-quick scan of the long list of options, and through a series of Matchmaker Presentations, whittles this down to a shortlist of final options.

Vendor Selection - moving from the shortlist to preferred vendor, our Rapid Selection process or our 30-day selection runs the quickest RFP process to find the ideal partner.

Understanding Your Buyers

Where the Finding New Technology area is 100% focused on helping buyers to find the right technology vendors and service providers, the Understanding Your Buyers area is the mirror image - it is focused on helping technology vendors (marketing and sales teams) understand their potential buyers.

We provide a range of services to help the vendor understand their buyer group, their target and customer accounts, the appropriate contacts for each, investigate why they win, and why they lose, and make introductions where and when we can.

Understanding the Buyer - to help the team understand their buyers so that they can target them with the right messaging and differentiate themselves, we run Account Research, Buyer Group Research, and a variety of other research work.

Market Perception - we also help the sales and marketing team understand how their brand and product is perceived in the market, and why they win or lose deals, so they can improve win rates and overall performance. We do this through our Voice of the Buyer 360 Service and associated services.

Partnership Improvement

Finally - as all good matchmakers should - we're focused on developing existing relationships for the long term. Our unique position, sitting between buyers and sellers, means we can act as a trusted third-party to identify challenges, resolve issues, and build a long-term, successful partnership. We're often called on to mediate service issues and commercial renewals, or to help teams to build get-well-plans.

Service Improvement - helping the IT team to improve the service levels of key or underperforming suppliers with our IT Service Improvement package.

Customer Satisfaction - helping the vendor to take the temperature of their most important customers with our Customer Success Check-up.

Persevere or Change - when the relationship is in dire straits, our Stick or Switch Application Review (or Service Review) helps the customer to drive improvement or look at alternative options.

Why Do Businesses Need Technology Matchmakers?

We are sometimes asked why businesses and vendors use a Technology Matchmaker. It's a good question and maybe worth asking our customers rather than us, but here is our viewpoint:

• We have a unique insight - we work with both sides of the buyer and seller equation - meaning that we know and understand them both.

  • We know how the sales team operates, how they qualify opportunities, how they negotiate, how not to work with them, how to keep them focused and engaged etc.

  • We know how buying teams operate, how a procurement exercise works, how a buying team comes together and in what sequence, etc.

• When businesses are looking for new technology, they generally have limited knowledge of the current technology marketplace - after all, their day job is focused internally, not externally. Viewpoint Analysis is focused 100% on the technology market, and we created and maintain a list of over 4,000 vendors across every part of the tech arena.

• We know how to run a vendor selection process - and we've refined ours so that less time is taken on the beauty parade, and more time on delivering the project and the subsequent ROI.

• When sales figures are not where they should be, tech vendor leadership teams make assumptions about why. We give them concrete evidence and can ask the difficult questions. Again, sitting in the middle means that we can actively engage both sides to find the answers that matter.

• When there is a dispute or challenge between the two parties, the usual step is to seek legal advice or cancel the contract. A Technology Matchmaker is a much better option because it gives both sides a chance to resolve the issue constructively.

• We act confidentially and usually sign NDAs before acting for our customers. We are trusted and proven in our approach.

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Want to find out more about Viewpoint Analysis and what we do for companies around the world? Take a look at our website and the three service areas.

If what we do sounds interesting and if we can help you find new technology, understand your buyers, or improve your partnerships, request a call and we'd love to talk through your challenge.