Content priorities in the IT decision cycle

Optimising your digital asset portfolio for maximum impact

The technology used by any business has a big impact on how well it operates and competes. Against this background, those involved in IT strategy, planning and procurement take significant technology investment decisions very seriously. They go through various steps and activities as they define needs, explore options and ultimately select suppliers and solutions. This buying process typically involves a range of different disciplines and stakeholders from both IT and the business.

If you work in a technology sales, marketing or PR role, whether in-house or agency-based, it can be hard to prioritise your content investments to support such complex buying and selling activity. Focusing purely on generic messages and material rarely works effectively, yet the other extreme of producing hundreds of assets to deal with every angle in every scenario is both unmanageable and cost-prohibitive.

The research laid out and discussed in this paper is designed to help. Based on input from 1,144 people involved either directly or indirectly in the investment cycle, we start out by reviewing some IT decision-making fundamentals. From there we go on to look at inputs into the process, and more specifically the kind of content seen as most valuable at each stage in the buying cycle from the buyer’s perspective. As the technology selling process is essentially the mirror image of this, the insights will help you make prioritisation calls when planning your next launch or campaign.

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Dale is a co-founder of Freeform Dynamics, and today runs the company. As part of this, he oversees the organisation’s industry coverage and research agenda, which tracks technology trends and developments, along with IT-related buying behaviour among mainstream enterprises, SMBs and public sector organisations.