5 ways software vendors try to trick you
While speaking with one of our customers a few years back, he remarked that our software didn’t have any “gotchas”–bad surprises that spring up after the purchase. In dealing with software vendors for many years, he told me that he had come to expect “gotchas” in all software purchases.
In other words, he actually expected that software vendors were trying to trick him. I don’t know about you, but that makes me sad. Should a customer be surprised when software does what it’s supposed to do, and costs what they expect it to cost? Of course not!
Perhaps a better question: How did it get to this point?
I think much of it starts with pricing. Business software licensing models aren’t exactly straightforward. In fact, they’re downright confusing. I’ve been in this industry for over 30 years, and I still run across licensing structures that confuse me.
The problem is, many of the licensing structures are confusing by design. Vendors lure buyers in with cheap price tags, only to sneak in a few “gotchas” when it’s time to buy, or after the purchase.
I’d like to help you avoid these unpleasant surprises. I’ve listed below 5 common vendor tricks to watch out for when buying business software: …
If your company runs on an aging ERP system or has difficulty connecting disparate data sources, here’s a great success story you’ll want to read. A manufacturing company needed a centralized place to access reports on the web. The challenge: It needed to integrate with their aging ERP system and pull data from 9 separate plants. The additional challenge: No one on their IT staff had any experience building web applications.