Read This First!

Let me explain how you can help improve the products, as well as the service and support, that your favourite business software company provides

An Open Letter to the IT Community

First of all, let me introduce myself.  My name is David Nordmark and until just recently I worked for a major business intelligence software company.   I worked in technical support, and I really enjoyed my job.  The reason for this is that I could honestly say that the company I worked for provided top notch customer service, and that it truly cared about its customers and employees.  However, as the company grew and became a public entity, the culture of the company radically changed.  Customer service and satisfaction was no longer the main priority.  In my opinion, the needs for short term financial gain replaced the culture of building customer relationships over the long term.  Of course, the senior management would strenuously deny this, but actions speak louder than words.  Whenever there was a conflict between cutting costs and improving our service and support, cost cutting won out.  This inevitably led to a slow but steady decline in the customer service we were able to provide, and my job increasingly became an exercise in frustration.  Things got to the point that I just couldn’t stand it anymore, which is why I recentlyterminated my employment with this particular firm.

Now, although I am much, much happier since I left this particular company (I can honestly say now that I wish I had quit a couple of years ago), my mind keeps coming back to how things got so bad there in the first place.  How did this happen?  There really was a time when I enjoyed my job.  What changed?  Although there are many factors, the main reason things fell apart, in my opinion, it that the senior management simply didn’t understand what they were doing.  When a company gets to a certain size, it becomes too easy for senior managers to run the firm based on numbers and reports.  When this happens, they lose sight of the fact that their companies are about people.  Both the people they employ, and the customers they serve.  This is why the service and support you receive from most software companies often winds up being so poor.

This is why I created this site.  I wanted to create a forum in which real people, who actually use this software, can provide feedback on their experiences with various companies.  This feedback can be used by other people in the IT community, as well as (hopefully) senior executives living in their Ivory Towers.  The kinds of feedback I am looking for are thoughts on how the products perform, as well as the service and support your received from the company.  There are some good companies out there.  We want to encourage those firms that truly demonstrate a commitment to their customers, as well as smack the wrists of those who talk the talk but don’t walk the walk.  It is my hope that this site could eventually become a useful resource for people who are looking to make a major business software purchase.  If you are able to go to this site and read comments from people who have actually used the software that you are thinking about buying, wouldn’t that be valuable?  As well, how good is this companies consulting and technical support?  Who would you trust?  A salesperson trying to make a sale, or people who have actually dealt with the company in the past?

Anyway, that was my idea, and why I created this site.  However, if this is going to work, I need your help!  This is how you can help turn this site into a valuable resource:

1)      If you are willing to write a short piece concerning the experience you’ve had with a particular business software company, and are willing to have it published to the web with your name, I want to hear from you.   You can comment on the product itself, what you thought was good or bad, what needs improving, etc.  As well, I want to hear about how you found the companies service and support.  Were they fast and knowledgeable?  Did you have to wait a long time on the phone?  Would you recommend their consulting services in the future?  Again, through this site, I want to share the real experiences that real people have had with this companies and their products.

2)      On the left hand side, you will see a few overviews that I have written for this site to get it going.  However, on the left you will also see a link for “Forum Letter”.  My goal with this is that it is important to get the word out about this site, at least until Google indexes it.  If you belong to any user groups, public forums, chat sites, etc that concern business software, please help this site out by copying and pasting the Forum Letter to it on my behalf.  This is the most effective way I can think of to get the word out. 

Anyway, that’s it for now.  If you’ve gotten this far, I just want to thank-you for reading this.  I look forward to hearing from you in the future.

Best Regards,

David Nordmark