Last week I met with one of my old colleagues, as he was visiting for a conference. We had the opportunity to discuss and remember a lot of stuff regarding my old job. One of them was our struggle to apply a newly acquired technical software, one that the previous company bought to use it for internationally oriented projects that required the use of international design regulations.

The reason about remembering that software was not our never ending love for our profession. It was rather a reference I made to my blog during our discussion. Instantly my friend told me: “Why don’t you write about the zero support that we got from those guys?” referring to the company that represented and sold that software in our country. And it hit me, as it will be the first time that I will talk about software as a product but also the service that it came with it, and to be honest I had totally forgotten about it.

First of all, I have to clarify that this software was not produced here, it was however an internationally recognized software. For some reason, that we do not know, we could not purchase it through an international vendor, and we had to buy it from some local company, which happened to have also a similar locally developed software. So, we bought the software with the sole criterion that it could do the analyses we needed, by giving results according to certain regulations. No second thoughts, no comparisons with other solutions. And we bought only a stand-alone license, with some extra modules. There was the solution to “buy” also technical support, meaning to scientific support from the local company, for example how to model certain structures. However, we thought that there was no meaning to do that. First of all, the manuals for this software were extensive, we were already specialists in what we were doing and furthermore, as the software was internationally used, there were a bunch of videos on youtube explaining everything we needed (thank you Indian guys). Thus, it was more likely that we should give the local company some knowledge and not vice versa.

Anyway, the time comes, and we get the license, we install the software, and we start working on it. And we realize that it misses a certain, yet simple functionality found in every single engineering project; to measure a distance between points. Pretty basic, right? It seemed like we could not find it, and after several attempts, we decided to just give the local company a call. And alas, they responded that they could not help us, as we had not bought the support service..! We had just given to them several thousand Euros and their response was, “sorry…not included”. For something that it should be in the first place. The funny thing is that we found a macro online and we installed it for free, it was user-produced, so no company involved.

We had the opportunity to meet those clowns in person, in a conference. I took the opportunity to talk to one of their experts (who was an expert in another domain, not the one that we worked on, yet he presented himself as a Jack of all trades for the sake of sales). I just wanted to understand if they know what they were doing or were just resellers with a very nice repackaging. Once I presented myself, as an engineer and the specifier that led to the sale of the software, and I asked him something specific, once he realized that we had not paid for service support he suggested that we should terminate the conversation as he had other things to do! Totally unprofessional response, and very bad sales practice, as if he wasn’t even interested to lure me to buy the service in the future or other modules. It was like “You didn’t give me money when I wanted it; you are dead to me”. He left and I was left frustrated.

Once every month I was getting some newsletter from the company developing the software. I remember replying to one of those email by mentioning that I have a complaint about their local distributor. I never got a reply. This software is still in use, and as far as I know, they fixed this stupid omission in the next version.

Conclusion

Software is one interesting product. In the past you used to buy and use it, nowadays the sale cycle is more complex, as you have new packages, microtransactions, SAAS, expertise services and support, server solutions with computing power etc. In the meantime, it is easier to find, test and buy solutions directly from the companies that produce them, bypassing the middleman, unless the middleman has something of value to add. If they are not doing something of value, they will vanish.

In this case we did not have only zero contribution by the reseller, but we also had badly trained salespersons (or no training at all). In a profession that values long standing relationships, it is moronic to work only with short term profit criteria and to handle the clients without any tact. Unless you are an opportunist, you have no place representing such an internationally acclaimed product. Of course, here the culprit is also the mother company that does not evaluate the local representative. But this is another story.

PS

I got a call from those guys a couple of months ago, a different sales person. It was the first time in years. The construction market here is booming and they are looking for suckers – sorry – clients to sell their solutions. But I will always remember that they are assholes, with nothing to contribute to the initial product. And I will always advocate against them when it comes to a similar buying decision for me or my partners and friends.