TechMarketView LLP provides authoritative research and analysis on the technology scene and is one of the most respected commentators in the market today.

We were therefore delighted they wanted to profile our organisation after they heard the news of pam being the first Pan-Government Accredited provider for specialist IL3 RESTRICTED work in the cloud such as multi agency case working and operations.  It’s the first formal review of our organisation’s prospects.  We got the thumbs up which is great. So much so that the phone has been ringing red hot since it was published.

I was reflecting on this over the weekend and wanted to share some thoughts around it.  The review illustrates how far we have come with a small team that directs its energies toward enhancing the customer experience.   For those readers who subscribe to TechMarketView, they would see we are praised for our strategy.  It’s about focusing in on certain sectors to develop specific solutions in collaboration with pioneering customers and earn their trust so together we make a real difference.

Because we built the platform with attractive functionality around core partnering features, pam offers many solutions to challenges faced in public and private sector.  pam is therefore more than a collaboration platform and has a rich ecosystem wrapped around it.   But at its most basic (just the core platform) pam has collaboration capability underpinning it.  So in the review we were also compared to the likes of Huddle, one of the many heavily funded venture capital owned collaboration providers in the market today.  I can understand this view and in some respects am flattered that a business that has had circa $50m of VC funds and spends so much on marketing and sales is a source of comparison.   But the comparison is one limited to category labels of ‘collaboration’, and in almost every way we are different; we have a much broader service offering than Huddle, but probably spend in a year what Huddle spends in a day on marketing & sales!  As a result our service is a secret amongst our user base but Huddle is very well exposed and on almost every banner ad over the internet as it aims to be the Sharepoint killer!  We are a little less aggressive but perhaps it is time to reveal the secret and explain how we are different…..

In the interview I described a reason of pam being different to Huddle (and other generic collaboration platforms) is that pam helps users move “beyond efficiency into effectiveness”.   In simple terms basic collaboration features save time versus other ways, we do that well too, but it is not always enough. Early adopters of ‘limited capability’ cloud collaboration tools are getting frustrated they cannot achieve more in one place.  Why buy a service that you quickly grow out of, and need to purchase separate applications on top to get the job done and then duplicate your work again?

So pam still offers the simple collaboration tools as part of our new ‘pam collaborate’ option (priced attractively to its peers) and it also draws on my own partnering expertise too.  Crucially the pam people have worked intimately with customers and built functionality they can use for much more of their day job beyond basic collaboration itself.  It means professional tools and frameworks from within pam to make better decisions that lead to better outcomes i.e. becoming more effective too.  The RoI is much higher than other collaboration tools albeit with a similar price point.  We also bring much more to the table – take a look at my Act Different presentation for example.

Just continuing the Huddle comparison, they tried to take much of our business a year or so ago but fortunately they failed. Aside from the way they went about it, some customers chose to evaluate their service versus ours, just in case Huddle was better!  It was clear that Huddle only offered limited comparison to pam’s capability and in the opinion of those users we had little to worry about, especially because we were giving better value for money as well. We often get compared to lots of other providers in different segments too, whether they are performance, intelligence, case management, decision support, relationship mgt and so on.  Whilst we focus more on our customers needs than what competitors are doing, I’m never one to take any provider lightly and like Huddle we also beat Sharepoint and many others with deep marketing pockets hands down too but don’t shout about it (maybe we should do that more too…)

I respect what Huddle has achieved and sometimes wish I had that level of funding too, although we want to plough our own path and be true to our values.  I’m not yet convinced we need anything more than the support and ‘pambassadors’ of our customer base to keep growing in a sustainable fashion.  I’m going to finish this subject with what one user said after their evaluation “why have a huddle when you can get a cuddle with pam and achieve so much more too?”  

So what next?  The TechMarketView reinforces that we are on the right path and you will hear much more about that and our ecosystem model in due course as our website evolves whilst we prioritise  roll out for new users and existing customers on our IL3 pam service.  We are also hiring a range of people to help us in that regard so if you know anyone that can share our secret well and help David beat the Goliath’s then please get in touch.