Every enterprise buyer wants a “good deal”, but what that actually means depends entirely on who’s in the room. In Episode 3, Eivind Sandstrand of Varde Media Solutions, OpenDrives CEO Trevor Morgan, and CTO Alex Dunfey dig into the real business outcomes enterprise technology buyers are chasing, and why speaking in generic technical specs misses what each stakeholder actually cares about.

Watch the full conversation below, or keep reading for the key takeaways and full discussion.

Watch the full episode on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6XakoLV-EXM

Key Takeaways

  • Whether time or cost matters most depends on the content: live, time-sensitive content (like sports highlights) demands speed, while long-lived content (like training videos) shifts the priority to production, maintenance, and distribution cost.
  • Nearly every enterprise outcome boils down to two words: efficiency and extensibility, but efficiency means something different to a CFO (cost) than to an IT director (ease of maintenance and administration).
  • Risk management belongs in the conversation too—a solution shouldn’t increase a business’s risk, and ideally should help manage it, though what “risk” means varies widely by industry.
  • Buyers aren’t just evaluating a product; they’re evaluating whether this purchase will look like a good decision to their own management later.

Time vs. Cost: It Depends on the Content

Dunfey framed the time-vs-cost tradeoff around how content gets used: “For some of the customers we have in sports… time is really important because time impacts their ability to engage with their customer base… really a sports team, when they’re generating content, it’s about the game that happened last night [and] they need to reach out to their audience as quickly as possible.” But that urgency doesn’t apply everywhere: “Maybe they have much longer time horizons, and they need content, but that’s long-lived content like training videos… where that initial time to release is less important. But for them… it probably then shifts to cost. What is the cost for them to initially produce it, and then what’s the cost for them to maintain it in the long term? And what’s the cost for them to be able to distribute it to who needs it?”

Sandstrand tied this back to a broader theme: “That is probably that common denominator when it comes to business outcomes.” As Dunfey put it plainly: “They all want more for less money.” Sandstrand agreed: “They want more manageability, more reportability. They want to be able to control the cost and understand where things are, where their money’s going.”

Efficiency and Extensibility Mean Different Things to Different People

Morgan, OpenDrives’ CEO, distilled the whole conversation down to two words: “You could cover all of these areas with just two words. One would just be efficiency. And by the way, efficiency means different things to different people. To the CFO, efficiency is cost efficiency. To the IT director or VP, efficiency may be efficiency of maintenance and administration.” The second word, extensibility, is just as role-dependent: “Can it stretch to cover other things? Whatever extensibility means, can it solve a different problem or can it be stretched to cover something over here or there?”

His advice for anyone selling into an enterprise: “You just need to speak their language. You need to know, well, in this person’s eyes and ears, what is an efficiency. Again, a CFO thinks of it differently than your head of IT.”

Why Risk Management Belongs in the Conversation Too

Sandstrand added a third pillar: “Maybe we could also throw in risk in there. Risk management… means a lot of different things to a news organization versus a financial services firm. But whatever the solution or the product… is, it certainly should not increase the risk of bankrupting the business, and ideally actually should help you manage the risk that’s related to it in a much better way.”

Morgan connected this to how buyers see themselves inside their own organization: “I still think all purchasers have that in mind today. When they’re looking at a solution and they’ve been granted budget… I think one of the outcomes is, is this going to fulfill and be representative of me making a good decision as a custodian of the company, or am I going to have to defend this? …I think they want to make sure that they’ve made a good choice in the eyes of their management and that it does well for the company.”

About the speakers

Eivind Sandstrand is Founder and Principal at Varde Media Solutions, a consultancy and solution builder focused on enterprise video, and OpenDrives’ channel partner for this series. Connect with him on LinkedIn here. You can also visit Varde Media Solutions at https://vardemediasolutions.com/.

Trevor Morgan is CEO of OpenDrives, with a 30-year career in enterprise software and a role at OpenDrives since 2018. Connect with him on LinkedIn here.

Alex Dunfey is CTO of OpenDrives, overseeing product development across OpenDrives’ Atlas Edge and Astraeus product lines, plus IT, customer support, and product teams. Connect with him on LinkedIn here.

FAQ 

What business outcomes do enterprise buyers actually care about, instead of technical specs?

Efficiency, extensibility, and risk management are the common denominators across industries, not technical specs like speeds and feeds.

Does “efficiency” mean the same thing to every stakeholder in a buying decision?

No. A CFO typically defines efficiency as cost efficiency, while an IT director or VP defines it as ease of maintenance and administration. Effectively selling to an enterprise means speaking to each stakeholder’s own definition.

Why do time and cost priorities differ so much by industry?

It depends on how the content is used. Industries with time-sensitive content, like sports, need near-instant turnaround because speed drives audience engagement. Industries with long-lived content, like training videos, care less about initial release speed and shift their priority to the cost of producing, maintaining, and distributing that content over time.

This is Episode 3 of our series with Varde Media Solutions, Debunking M&E Myths and Uncovering How Media Tech Partners Can Effectively Drive Business Value for Corporate Video. Look out for more episodes here: https://opendrives.com/blog/the-corporate-video-series/.

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