Solutions schmolutions

It seems that many companies adopt  the world ‘solution’ or its plural form when promoting their company, products or services.

And it doesn’t seem to be restricted just to the IT community where its use is commonplace. I have come across its use in many business sectors including Consultancy, Financial services and many types of Business services.  Which makes me want to reflect on my long-held prejudice that this is the laziest, least intelligent form of marketing communication. Have I been wrong all these years? Does its use convey real meaning to others?

A quick trawl through Google brought up the following page results:

• “Enterprise solutions”: 149,000,000
• “Technology solutions”: 73,200,000
• “Business solutions” 59,900,000
• “IT Solutions”: 30,400,000
• “Management solutions” 27,800,000
• “Web solutions” 23,500,000
• “Marketing solutions”: 22,500,000
• “Recruitment solutions” 7,490,000
• “Financial solutions” 6,70,000
• “Office solutions” 6,620,000

So what does it mean to the customer? According to the Merriam Webster online dictionary (or should I say language repository solution) the definition of the word is as follows:

(source: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/solution)

1
a : an action or process of solving a problem
b : an answer to a problem : explanation; specifically : a set of values of the variables that satisfies an equation
2
a : an act or the process by which a solid, liquid, or gaseous substance is homogeneously mixed with a liquid or sometimes a gas or solid
b : a homogeneous mixture formed by this process; especially : a single-phase liquid system
c : the condition of being dissolved
3
: a bringing or coming to an end or into a state of discontinuity

I am guessing the marketers using this world with such gay abandon are trying to communicate that their ‘solution’ exists to solve or answer the problem. The trouble of course is that they don’t specify exactly what problem they solve or answer.

My suspicion (and I suspect any reader is the same) is that they simply don’t know. So rather than go through the boring process of understanding customers and their context-of-use, their catchall, ahem, solution, is to append the word after their product category.

For instance, ‘workspace solutions’ is one I have been seeing lately. What on earth does that mean? And what in heaven can I expect to get for it? “What? You can solve my workspace problem?. Amazing, why thank you so much, I have been trawling the universe  for answers to this problem and here you are with the solution.”

The trouble of course is that this is a product centric view of the world. The promoter provides ‘workspace services” for people with “workspace problems” and the easiest way to communicate this is by positioning their service as resolving customers’ problem. The reality however is much more complex. Markets break down into job-based typologies, whose strategy for resolving their problems is to find the best tool to perform the job. If you can’t define the job your product performs for them,  you are never going to compete.

So ditch the word solution, stop focusing on your product’s ubiquitous virtues and work out what people are really buying from you. Its a revelation.

Follow