Vendor Meeting
Today I met with the vendor rep for our financial and human resource systems. I was surprised not to have heard from the rep before, given that I’ve been here for almost a year and that we are current customers and that every other service provider or potential service provider seems extremely willing to suck up for a scrap of business these days. In fact, I didn’t even get an invite to their Educause festivities/demos/etc. So, we met. To his credit, he started by apologizing for not being in contact. Then, after talking about our needs, their services, etc., here’s what I learned, according to this guy:
- software as a service is a myth! Don’t believe the hype! It’s still at least 5 years from reality.
- for $190 hour, I can hire their consultants to show us how to improve our processes to more effectively use their systems, and the minimum time would be 80 hours.
I repeated back to the representative what I learned to show that I’m an effective and active listener:
- so, the software that various companies are serving to us over the internet for which we are paying a monthly usage fee is, I guess, a myth? Good to know….
- I can spend $15,000 for my vendor to bring in consultants to improve processes they didn’t improve in the first place? What is our support agreement for again?
I’ve been back at work for 8.5 hours and I’m already snarky and hostile. That vacation high sure didn’t last long.
Kyle said:
Jan 05, 09 at 7:42 pmDon’t feel bad. Our ERP vendor only calls when they have a new product or service they want me to buy. Last time it was going to be a mere $250,000 for their CRM product. What a bargain! I’ll take two.
etselec said:
Jan 06, 09 at 1:24 pmSee, for me, coming back from vacation was like this:
“Happy New Year! Please line up in an orderly fashion to have your butt kicked.”
admin said:
Jan 07, 09 at 4:59 pmYou know, reading these responses reminds me of why I blog. I’m not sure why anyone reads my blog, but I do know why I like to hear back. Once again, I’m reminded of How Much Worse It Can Be.
rufusb said:
Jan 08, 09 at 6:04 amOh yeah? Get with this. Yesterday I asked my boss to clarify an e-mail he’d sent out asking for two volunteers to be the go-betweens with Level 2 support. I asked “Is this two people per department or two for the entire school?”. To which he replied “Yes.”
admin said:
Jan 08, 09 at 5:21 pmWhen my older brother was learning to talk, he would answer a question with “nes,” a sort of a no/yes combo word. According to my mother, I would then interpret for the questioner whatever this meant. So, I believe your boss means “yes.” And, yes, it makes no sense. Ah, life! That feeling you feel? That’s called “fun!”
kdghty said:
Jan 08, 09 at 8:46 pmI had the politically-savvy “It’s good to have a job to come back to” response all ready and the first thing my boss said was how she hated to come back…