The Minnesota Lotus Notes user group met recently to discuss a migration from Domino to Exchange by RSM McGladrey. You can see the presentation for yourself here.
A couple of thoughts on this. First, the “problems” they identified for moving away from Domino included:
- Aging Lotus Notes solution did not meet the needs of a mobile workforce
- Need more flexible and web-based interfaces
- Anyplace, anytime access to email
- Integration with Microsoft apps
- 85% of workers are mobile most of them
The solution to these problems seems to be pretty easy to me: “upgrade to Notes 6.5 or higher.”
While we all know that Domino CAN do all of the things in the “problems” list above, that’s not the point I want to make. I think this is a GREAT example of why Lotus/IBM needs to do more marketing about Lotus Notes/Domino. Its clear through comments like this (from big companies, even) that there are basic features in Notes that people don’t know about.
Now, IBM is doing a good job of allowing this story to continue to be told because there are some good things for current and potential Notes customers to read about. However, I challenge that a stronger, focused marketing campaign that communicates the value of Lotus Notes in the enterprise would do even more good.
Think about it: if a company like RSM McGladrey, an existing Notes shop, can come to the conclusion to rip out Domino and replace it with Exchange based on the bullet points above … then doesn’t suggest that Lotus/IBM isn’t adequately communicating the value, features and power of their tools with each version release!?
Marketing. It works. – I’ve said before that the “R5 – I am” commercials were the closest thing I’ve seen to a strong marketing campaign. It was a good start, I wish they would have kept going.
Maybe in Notes 8?
April 24th, 2007 at 6:29 pm
Kevin,
As I said in my extensive comments on the presentation, this was a political decision driven by the desire to align with their new parent company. No other explanation has been offered for why they went that route rather than consider an upgrade.
http://www.edbrill.com/ebrill/edbrill.nsf/dx/mnnotes411-rsm-mcgladrey-talks-about-its-migration
The R5 campaign made Notes afficionados happy, but it had little material impact on the actual product sales and mindshare. There are other ways to accomplish end-user marketing, and it’s definitely on the agenda for Notes 8, but we can’t use the R5 effort as the benchmark.