3/24/2018 (7) Customer jobs reveal fake vendor adoption claims.

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Customer jobs reveal fake vendor

adoption claims.
Published on August 16, 2017

Ahmed Azmi Following

Developer Advocate | Community Builder | Writer 46 23 14
28 articles

A warning message to customers.

Some vendors routinely fake claims about product adoption.

Here’s how they do it.

They seed customer sales orders with a number of additional product or services licenses.
The licenses are given away as a special promotion or at 100% discount. These false
purchases are later reported as legitimate sales figures and used to mislead shareholders and
potential buyers.

How to expose fake claims?

Use customer jobs to expose fake marketing

claims.

When customers actually implement a new product, they invariably need resources to
setup and operate their new systems. This is when they post job openings looking for
resources with the required skills.

A customer job, therefore, is a single adoption

data point.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/customer-jobs-reveal-fake-vendor-adoption-claims-ahmed-azmi/?lipi=urn%3Ali%3Apage%3Ad_flagship3_pulse_read%3BbAqj9siSTT%2BQ3xUfs%2FtIdA%3D%3D&licu=urn%3Ali%3Acontrol%3Ad_f
3/24/2018 (7) Customer jobs reveal fake vendor adoption claims. | LinkedIn

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Any job site, like LinkedIn, is a perfect research tool for this kind of investigation. Let’s
work through a couple of examples together.

Example 1 - Actual market adoption vs. vendor figures

SAP recently announced nearly 6,000 S4/HANA customers. What percent of those
customers are actually implementing the product or in production mode? Doing a LinkedIn
job search using the product name returns 584 jobs globally to date. That's one job for
every 10 licensed customers or a 10% actual adoption rate.

Messaging

Example 2 - Vendor comparison

Which HR has higher market adoption? Workday or SuccessFactors?

Simply compare worldwide jobs posted on LinkedIn for Workday and SuccessFactors.

Worldwide jobs posted for "Workday": 36,638

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/customer-jobs-reveal-fake-vendor-adoption-claims-ahmed-azmi/?lipi=urn%3Ali%3Apage%3Ad_flagship3_pulse_read%3BbAqj9siSTT%2BQ3xUfs%2FtIdA%3D%3D&licu=urn%3Ali%3Acontrol%3Ad_f
3/24/2018 (7) Customer jobs reveal fake vendor adoption claims. | LinkedIn

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Worldwide jobs posted for "SuccessFactors": 3,843

Customer jobs reflect actual market adoption

of any product or service. The more customers
use a product, the more jobs they post for
resources with that particular skill. This is a
simple and unbiased tool to expose fake claims
and help you make informed purchase
decisions.

Did you find this article helpful? Do you have any suggestions or critique? let's talk!

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Lisa Mannion 7mo

Taking time out to recharge and be with family and friends

Leave your thoughts here…Thanks for the share. Job postings stats can indeed be a great
indicator of where the market is really at.
Like Reply 1 Like

Barnes McLaurin 7mo

Regional Sales Director - Large Enterprise & Strategic Accounts at Workday

Job postings are a relevant indicator for sure...another is the number of mobile app downloads
and reviews because it talks to real world adoption and usage as well. Oracle Cloud HCM has 42
t t l i S F t h 104 d W kd h 2 088 I it i id t l th t th
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/customer-jobs-reveal-fake-vendor-adoption-claims-ahmed-azmi/?lipi=urn%3Ali%3Apage%3Ad_flagship3_pulse_read%3BbAqj9siSTT%2BQ3xUfs%2FtIdA%3D%3D&licu=urn%3Ali%3Acontrol%3Ad_f
3/24/2018 (7) Customer jobs reveal fake vendor adoption claims. | LinkedIn
total app reviews, SuccessFactors has 104, and Workday has 2,088. Is it coincidental that those
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Search numbers align with the job posting information above?
Premium
Like Reply 4 Likes · 1 Reply

Ahmed Azmi 7mo

Developer Advocate | Community Builder | Writer

Another great insight Barnes. Customer jobs, practitioner profiles, and app downloads.
Crowdsourcing good ideas in progress. 👍 (edited)
Like Reply

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Ahmed Azmi
Developer Advocate | Community Builder | Writer

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