Leader - Ringing the changes

Three separate reports gave pause for thought on vendors' marketing strategies this week. First, there was the public spat between Unisys and British Airways at the IDC Global Summit in Istanbul.

BA said vendors don't work closely enough with customers and make too little effort to understand their customers' business. Unisys, a BA supplier, was distinctly unimpressed. Clients, said Unisys, frequently don't get their act together. The result, after a lot of shouting in Istanbul, appeared to be one-all.

Then there was the inaugural meeting of Europe's IT marketing pressure group, the Foundation, which met last week in rural Wiltshire. Its message had a realistic ring: vendor marketing strategies in the UK are too often sales-led, confused and piecemeal, adapted at half-cock from US policies that take little account of local market conditions.

Finally, these wise words were supported by a third piece of evidence - the Banner survey on purchasing trends, which points out that small companies are lagging behind in adoption of the Net and other technology.

Three swallows do not a summer make. And despite Banner's recognition that vendors are becoming interested in SMEs precisely because their large corporate markets are reaching saturation point, it would be nice to think that some kind of new maturity was about to enter vendors' marketing strategies.

In time, of course, it will - so long as customers continue to push for it.