Vendors, be Honest

A colleague of mine recently e-mailed:

"What I've seen in the past is that COTS applications are selected based on (1) functionality fit with user requirements and (2) vendor's ability to come to terms with ... purchasing. Once those two things are satisfied, contracts get signed and the project moves forward."

This got me to thinking about the total cost for a new vendor product. Obviously, if the product is selected, money is committed. For some products, this could mean a high license fee. License fees are not the only element of committment. Integation costs, training for operations support, hardware, and ongoing hosting are all costs which need to be added. Based on researching the integration and deployment costs for the environments I've delivered, on average, for every $1 spent in licenseing, figure $2-4 additional cost before the solution is whole and in-production. This could mean alot of money in the end (e.g. if $150K of licenseing, then an additional $400K project to get it into production).

Much of the decision process for a product is based on the sales process, and statements by the vendor about the product's ability to meet the requirements. Therefore, "[it's] unacceptable for vendors to tout features during the sales call and then later say one shouldn't use those features", my colleague further wrote.

Honesty about the product and product quality is a huge issue with any large organization. Recent product quality issues have caused my client to begin considering a replacement. This will undoubtedly cause large costs for systems replacement and data migration, but my client feels it's worth it, given that they have provided the vendor opportunities to correct the problem, but it doesn't seem to have an effect.

Furthermore, honesty about a product is required else a company may not make their business committments. With regulatory requirements, product launches, emergence into new markets all weighing heavily on a company's bottom-line, if your product becomes part of the critical path to deliver, the lawsuit from fines, revenue-lost, or other lawsuits could be severe.

Morale of this blog: Vendors, be honest about the products you sell, and be honest about your committment to support them once they're sold. Else face a penalty which far exceeds the license and the deployment cost combined.