A woman who identified herself as "a SAM adviser for Microsoft" explained in an introductory letter, sent in late June, that she was working on a national initiative the software vendor created because it understands the complexity of managing valuable IT assets. Microsoft had identified the distributor as having possible challenges, just as the SAM team had seen with other "strategic" customers, she wrote. The woman, who worked for a third-party firm called SEI Information Technology Inc., suggested that a 30-minute call would be in the distributor's best interest.
But any hint that the SAM team may have revised the heavy-handed pitching tactics that caused some customers to complain to Computerworld during the past two months soon evaporated. The CIO, who asked that he not be identified for fear of retribution, said the SAM adviser turned "very irate" and threatened to call the distributor's CEO when he declined her offer.
"She even was demanding immediate information over the phone on how many licenses we had from certain Microsoft applications," the CIO said. "It's a sneaky tactic, trying to come in under the mask of offering a service to help manage our licenses, when all along it is an audit."
He wasn't the only IT manager left with that impression. Neither was he the first to think that his company had been approached by a sales representative who was working on commission.
The CIO at a Portland, Ore.-based division of a global logistics company who asked not to be named said he asked a Microsoft SAM engagement manager about her compensation package during an introductory phone call last week, when her persistence intensified even after he explained that his operation doesn't have time to participate due to more pressing projects. The CIO said she told him it was a confidential matter.
He added that the engagement manager repeatedly spoke of escalating the matter to an officer of the logistics company while insisting that she was merely looking for his division to be in compliance with its software licenses -- which it already is, he said.
Revenue recovery
According to Juan Fernando Rivera, worldwide director of Microsoft's SAM program, part of the compensation received by the engagement managers is based on the revenue they recover for unpaid licenses on software that customers have been using.
"It's not like a police officer having a quota of tickets that they have to write in a month," Rivera said this month. But, he added, "we set a goal, so to speak, of the number of engagements that we think could potentially be done in any particular marketplace."
Rivera said workers from SEI and other third parties that Microsoft hires to represent it under the SAM program are paid an hourly wage. He added that the workers also might receive incentives, but he had no information on that subject. Microsoft's regional subsidiaries are responsible for determining the compensation packages, Rivera said.
The company declined to make representatives from the subsidiaries available, saying that all SAM-related questions should be directed to Rivera.
Discussions of compensation and quotas don't sit well with Milton Bliss, CIO at Sunwest Management Inc. in Salem, Ore., especially after listening to Microsoft insist that a SAM engagement's purpose is neither sales nor an audit.
"I cannot possibly understand how Microsoft could argue that it's not an audit, when they are commissioning the people performing the work based upon how much money they bring in," Bliss said.
"I am annoyed by their dancing around the words."
Rivera said he recognizes that many customers feel threatened when the SAM team approaches them. But, he added, the SAM approach was designed to be a "middle point" on the pendulum swing between doing "absolutely nothing" to ensure that companies are properly licensed to "beating customers over the head with a hammer" by doing formal audits. Rivera said his title changed from director of worldwide license compliance to head of the SAM program when it was launched in the U.S. a year ago, reflecting the company's changed approach.
SAM engagement managers are measured partly on customer satisfaction, and the SAM group is on notice from CEO Steve Ballmer that Microsoft will pull the plug on the program if customer satisfaction plummets, Rivera said.
Rivera noted that his group is working on both internal and external education programs, and that it conducts training sessions for SAM engagement managers. But its influence extends only so far. He said that Microsoft's regional subsidiaries ultimately have autonomy over the actual scripts used with customers.
And in the U.S., discretion on the wording of e-mails is left to individual engagement managers, according to Jackie Carriker, director of the SAM program for Microsoft's U.S. subsidiary.
"We provide our SAM engagement managers with guidelines on the messages and positioning we want to communicate to our customers," Carriker wrote in an e-mail response to a question. "But we are not prescriptive on the tone or style of individual communication pieces."