Yes failed leadership and vision has led to the decline of Teradata. Too engrossed in the hype of a legacy solution which now has been overtaken by creative, visionary competitors who connect with customers at a both technical and strategic level. Now this has long been the criticism of the so called visionaries at the helm of the controls at Teradata.
Whilst these are valid reasons, what also has not helped is the antics of some of those highly paid long serving individuals whose sole responsibility is to engage with clients, build relationships and drive growth through product and service sales.
Management at regional level have failed to address issues such as for example one specific individual responsible for service sales who is only active and available for no more than 3 hours a day.
An Account Executive in one of the regions persistently resorting to pulling in renewals 6 months early in order to hit their targets, no consideration for any erosions from the existing contracts. In order to hit their cloud quota, Account Executives selling cloud dev / test environments without fully acknowledging the strategic impact on the account if issues are encountered by the client. Sell it because once sold it's a services issue.
Is it ok for management to turn a blind eye to one individual responsible for service sales who has persistently been off sick for 20 to 30 days a year, every year but failed to register their sick leave. Appalling behaviour that should never be condoned has been ignored year on year.
I am sure ETL will not take lightly situations where Service Sales and Account Executives have got so drunk on nights out, they either missed key meetings with clients or failed to show up to work the following day.
I am sure the ELT would at the very least expect AE's to prepare their own client presentation and Service Sales price up deals and key documents such as contracts but no, certain individuals have delegated that is out.
To add to this, there is an evident disconnect between Account Executives and Service Sales, one trying to out do the other when in reality success, real success is through collaboration.
The problem is, for some unknown reason, by turning a blind eye Geo leads are protecting these people. Whilst this continues and there is a failure to perform the basic tasks, client retention will alway be a issue.
These things may sound trivial but collectively they have a major impact on client relationships, retention and more importantly the reputation of Teradata. Our competitors will look for a weakness and leverage this as an opportunity for them.
This needs to be addressed if there is any chance of turning the ship around. Some may say it's too late but addressing this now at the very least will slow down the rot. Let's face it, many many good people will be riffed this week whilst the rotten core will still remain.