Vignette Partners Bullish On New Go-To-Market Strategy

Vignette

The new strategy, which comes on the heels of lower-than-expected fourth-quarter sales, also encompasses a simplified pricing model and a redeployment of the Vignette sales force so it can better support solution providers in smaller engagements.

Vignette began moving toward this new strategy last September, when it released its V6 enterprise content management suite. The new agenda, detailed at a partner conference in Las Vegas last week, was well received by some partners.

"My sense is that most of the partners are pretty excited about this," said Chris McLaughlin, global practice director for content management at Inforte, a Chicago-based e-business consultancy. "They [Vignette are as a company all moving in one direction, very focused and very driven to make this happen."

In the down economy, partners say Vignette has been hampered by a perception that its software is very expensive, complex and only suited for large-scale, enterprise deployments.

"I believe there is a perception that they're being priced out of the market, and I think this helps address a market perception issue," said Tom Fornoff, vice president of alliances at Sapient, Austin, Texas.

Vignette now offers a standard edition that includes most of the functionality of its enterprise edition, minus an enterprise management console, integrated search engine and advanced analytics tools. The standard edition is priced at $200,000 for use with up to six processors, while the enterprise edition starts at $400,000 with a license for running on up to 14 processors.

The CPU-based pricing replaces what Santi Pierini, vice president of product strategy at Vignette, described as a 64-page document that required "a seasoned sales representative" to figure out. "Now it's basically two options with some extensions and whatever options you want," he said.

While the partners said the simplified pricing will make the sales cycle easier, more important may be the redeployment of Vignette direct-sales representatives, who had been focused exclusively on a set of named accounts. Now a sales team has geographies in which it can work with partners to drum up departmental engagements, partners said.

"The big difference right now is the complete refocusing of their sales force to think along these lines," McLaughlin said. "In the past, they may have been a little too focused on pursuing enterprise opportunities."

Over the past year, Vignette has also reduced the size of its professional services organization from 900 to about 300 consultants.

"We look at it as a very positive sign and a continuing commitment on their part to push more services to their partners," McLaughlin said.