> On Oct 27, 2017, at 7:49 AM, Ed Jaffe <[email protected] > <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: > > On 10/26/2017 8:21 PM, Longnecker, Dennis wrote: >> I miss CA-1. I found it much easier to use than RMM. I am constantly >> trying to remember how to find things in RMM that were so simple to find in >> CA-1. What I especially miss is the reporting in CA-1. They were so simple >> to create. I find that I have to utilize FDR/ABR reporting to give me the >> RMM reports I want. > > There are two main reasons people use one product over another: functionality > and cost. You miss CA-1's functionality over RMM. > > It's highly unusual for support to be much of a factor in product decisions > unless the customer has encountered an ongoing pattern of serious problems > that never get resolved. That's what makes Ed Gould's line of reasoning in > this thread so bewildering...
The place I used to work for, before any software was ordered, everybody got to chime in with their suggestions about the product also about any renewals. Let me put this introspective as we *ONLY* were able to test on Sundays (and that was further restricted by outside factors, which we could not change. When we got the system it was about 8AM Sunday and we had to really beat the system to find any bugs before we could consider testing production. I have a friend who I am like, as he finds bugs which no one else can, I come in second. Anyway since our test time was limited if we ran into a wall for EXAMPLE with CA-1 we had to get it fixed then and not wait for next weeks (maybe test time). I was the senior person and tried to let the younger sysprogs to call the vendors and deal with the issue. I would listen in on the conversations some times to see how they were going. If the Jr person ran into a brick wall, he would ask me to get involved. Many times I took over problems and the person on the other end was jerking the jr sysprog around. I would step in and let him try the same thing on me. I would not put up with it and demanded to talk to his/her supervisor. Generally the person came on the phone as he was at home. I explained the narrow window that we had for test time and the issue we were having and the non response we were getting from their support person. If he/she gave me a hard time, I would write the VP a memoir about how the company wasn’t being straight with us. When it came time for renewal the VP called the sales rep in and read him the riot act. We (the company) was lets say the center of several stock type markets. If we didn’t open (i.e. send them all their data by a specified time we got fined in big dollars) we came close one time where markets opened 15 minutes late and we got reamed for it and no raises that year. One time bad data was sent out and the programmer got fired. The VP always looked after his people and always listened to us. When we gave a bad review to any vendor and the VP agreed we went searching for a replacement. Sometimes there were only 1 vendor and the only thing you could do was scream at the rep. I think it was around 1992+- that the ability to put SWA above the line was made available. I knew we were going to be early ship. I also knew that one of the products would be using it. I called all the vendors and got their manager on the line and told them that we *HAD* to implement swa above the line and told the managers to have a fix available in 2 months. 2 months go by and we had two uncooperative vendors. I have trashed both of them on here repeatedly so no need to stick the knife in any deeper. The one comes up with a zap in three weeks. The other we never hear back from them so I called them and they said it was a low priority issue and they might address it in a year. I was livid. Fortunately, the vendor supplied source to their one stubborn product so one afternoon, I went through the listing and found the place where I could change it so it would accommodate swa above the line. We tested it one Sunday. Bright and early I was on the phone to the vendor and said look it took me 15 minutes to fix your damn program, why can’t you? The guy actually asked me if I could send them a copy of the fix and I asked for a years free rent on their product, he wasn’t in a position to offer it to us. I said let me know when you guys can come up with the fix. I hung up on him. I fired off a memo to the VP and he got the company to get off the package and go with another one. He also made sure that the company knew why. Ed ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
