PHIL SIMON began independent software consulting in 2002 after six years of related corporate experience. He has cultivated over twenty clients from a wide variety of industries, including healthcare, manufacturing, retail, and the public sector. Phil has assisted both domestic and international organizations in every aspect of system implementations, activations, and ongoing maintenance. An avid—but poor—golfer and a respectable tennis player, Phil lives in Northern NJ, USA.
To find out more information about Phil and his company, visit his website: www.philsimonsystems.com.
The salesman knows nothing of what he is selling save that he is charging a great deal too much for it.
Oscar Wilde
Chapter 5: The Sounds of Salesmen
A very good friend of mine is the head of HR for a medium-sized accounting firm. As his firm has grown, the hodgepodge of Access databases, Excel spreadsheets, and other disparate sources of employee information has made doing business increasingly difficult. Government reporting, hiring, tracking employee turnover (with the intent of minimizing “regrettable attrition”), and the like had become too onerous. What’s more, knowing which employees have which skills (a key in a service-oriented firm such as his) takes quite a few phone calls. After a few years of consideration and a few months of interviewing prospective vendors, he selected a new HR/Payroll system for his company.
A few weeks after signing the contract with the vendor, however, he was aghast: Functionality that he believed was standard in the new application such as electronically automating the new hire “on-boarding” process was, in fact, an “enhancement” or “customization.” The vendor could build these features into the “vanilla” product, but the time and expense required would not be covered under the initial terms of the contract.
My friend could not believe what he was hearing. Already encountering issues so early into the project, he faced the possibility of going back to his senior management and telling him that the new system would require more money. He was not too excited at this possibility. Did I mention that he works for an accounting firm?
Unfortunately, this scenario is all too commonplace, as I told him. While possibly a bit of an exaggeration, the Glengarry Glenross mindset of “Always Be Closing” is still quite prevalent in many software companies. Specific to the software industry, salespeople view making sales as their primary objective while “getting it to work” is typically the consultants’ job. I can’t recall the number of times that end-users have asked me to demonstrate functionality that they erroneously believed was “out of the box.” In truth, however, it was not available without some type of modification or system enhancement.
This disconnect is sometimes the result of an overly ambitious salesperson or team at an individual software vendor. However, in my experience, it is endemic to most teams at most software vendors. They often joke to the effect of “Let the consultants figure it out.”
To be completely fair to salespeople, systems are becoming more powerful with “add-on” type tools. So, when a prospective client asks a question about the “out of the box” functionality of a system, the salesperson will say, “Yes, the system can do that.” However, she often neglects to mention that, in order for the system to do that, the prospect would have to purchase one or more of the following products mentioned below.
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