Interview with Mehmet Güner (Efekan Güven)

Mehmet Güner is currently STG manager of IBM in Ankara. Honestly, he is my manager :) STG is for Systems and Technology group and STG sells system x servers, power microprocessors, storage systems and pure flex servers. Mehmet Güner graduated from METU, the Department of Business Administration. he worked for KocSistem as Group Manager for more than 14 years, then he became Sales Manager in Siemens. After that he was elected as assistant general manager at Cisco. Finally, he is in IBM as STG manager. He has so many experiences with procurement process and software sales. I tested so many hypothesis of us like our target market and subscription model. After the interview, I was like "OMG! let's change everything again!". Because our hypothesises have failed again. Not everything was that much pessimistic about us. He clearly understand what our product is and why it is good for customer. He told me our main VP without waiting my explanations. Let me explain his advices and feedback:

First; he offered that we should not work with universities. Because they make standard procurements and and they procure products that have little variety. Rather than that; we have to work with factories or merchandise product manufacturers. Besides, the product should be complicated and should be produced by using so many raw material and semi-products. Those sectors target economies of scale (minimum average cost) and the prices in that sectors depend on the country that you import the raw material, daily changes in economy and the connections of the importer. Therefore, taking prices from so many companies that has different global connection would attract these sectors. I directly asked for a sector name and he replied with white goods and automotive sectors. I pushed him upon automotive and he continued. He said ford purchases carburettor more that one companies. It is just one of the thousand pieces of a car. Ford factories in Bursa can enjoy our offer since the prices are changeable among different suppliers from different parts of the world. Besides; financial evaluations will e more practical with an online bid interface. It is easy to evaluate costing criterion.

Second important point is about revenue model. He said you have to supply know-how services to apply subscription model; because that is how software sector goes. However; we cannot sell know-how according to him. The reason he explained is critical. We cannot know about automotive more than the guys in that sector. We have to knnow where to stop; we are just software sellers. The I asked how software guy make money. The answer is taking money from UPGRADES, INITIAL PRICE and CUSTOMIZATION. By customization; he means different requirements of different customers. For example, some might have transportation unit and some might be outsourcing transportation services. Different requierement will cost to customers.

Efekan Güven