The Marketing Technology Blog

This weekend I started up a conversation with a local artist who has been assisting her boss with the management of a couple of web applications her boss owns.

The conversation took a turn and some venting went on about paying weekly development fees without seeing any progress with the developer they’ve been working with. Now the developer wants to charge them another lump sum fee to complete the project as well as a weekly maintenance fee to cover other requests. It gets worse.

The developer transferred the domain names so he could manage them. The developer also hosts the application on his hosting account. In short, the developer is now holding them hostage.

Thankfully, the woman I’m working with demanded administrative access in the past to edit some of the template files for the site. The developer could have provided her limited access but he didn’t. He (lazily) provided her with the administrative login to the site. Tonight I used that access to backup all of the code for the site. I also figured out what management software he was using and made my way to the database administration where I was able to export both applications’ data and table structures. Whew.

The owner was planning on moving the sites to new domain names once development was completed. That’s huge because it means the current domains could expire in the event that there’s an angry separation between the developer and the company. I’ve seen this happen before.

Some tips if you’re going to get an outsourced development team:

1. Domain Registration

   Register your domain names in your company’s name. It’s not bad to have your developer as a Technical Contact on the account, but never transfer ownership of the domain to anyone outside your company.

2. Hosting your Application or Site

   It’s great that your developer might have a hosting company and can host your site for you, but don’t do it. Instead, ask his recommendations for where to host the application. It is true that developers get acquainted with the management software, versions, and location of resources and that can help your product be completed sooner. That said, though, own the hosting account and add your developer with his own login and access. This way, you can pull the plug whenever you need to.

3. Own the Code

   Don’t assume that you own the code, put it in writing. If you don’t want your developer using the solutions you paid him/her to develop elsewhere, you must decide that at the time of the contract. I’ve developed solutions this way but I’ve also developed them where I retain rights to the code. In the latter case, I negotiated the cost of the application lower so that there was an incentive to the company to give me rights. If you don’t mind your developer using your code elsewhere, then you shouldn’t be paying top dollar!

4. Get a second opinion!

   It doesn’t hurt my feelings when folks tell me they’re taking bids or consulting with other professionals. In fact, I recommend it!

The bottom line is that you’re paying for your developer’s talent but you must retain control and ownership over the idea. It’s yours. It was you who invested in it, you who risked your business and profitability for it… and it’s you who should keep it. Developers can be replaced and that should never put your application, or worse - your business, at risk.

Our clients utilize PCAnywhere for their support issues. I’m running Vista - so when I tried to load our licensed client, I was swiftly met with an incompatibility message and the installer quit.

In visiting the Symantec site, they of course fixed the compatibility issue with an upgrade to version 12.1. The snag? You have to pay $100 for the upgrade. I have to have it, so I paid the $100. Paying $100 for an application to simply work after you paid the initial licensing before is really enough to make you angry.

Now that I have 12.1 loaded up, I’m having tons of problems with it. The app appears to be running if I look in Task Manager, but the window is nowhere to be found. And if I do get the window up, it’s totally blank. I started researching the issue in the Symantec forums. One note I found was a great article on the Symantec Autofix program.

What kind of software company writes a program that fixes issues that affect their original program? I guess Symantec would be that company.

Hey Symantec: If you know what the problem is and how to fix it, put the fix in your original application!!!

After installing the Autofix program, PCAnywhere still continues to have issues. I cringe when I have to use any Symantec program… I’ve been writing about them for too long.

My team of good friends, Jason, Bill, Carla and I drove to Cincinnati yesterday for our final I-Prize presentation with Cisco. The Carmel facility is a lot closer but Cisco needed to move us to enable their full Innovation team to be present.

The Finals!

With over 1100 international entries to the contest, we were selected and made the 32 semi-finalists. Now we were one of the final 12 ideas presenting in front of the very board who initiated the contest. No pressure, huh?

I couldn’t think of a better mix of team mates to work with on this project. The irony, of course, is when you pick a team of hard workers… all of us have challenging jobs already. The I-Prize really added to our workload and I’m thankful I had friends who would step up when I couldn’t. You could see the strain leave our bodies and the smiles return after we finished the presentation.

The Telepresence Experience

A sample video of Telepresence is on YouTube but it really doesn’t provide the full experience.

The room is a partial oval table that directly faces 3 enormous screens with built-in video cameras. When you plugin your laptop to do your presentation, it’s projected locally under the screens as well as remotely under the screen so all members can see it.

We had parties at 3 physical telepresence locations at our meeting as well as another caller who simply dialed in. The system automatically flips the image based on which location is speaking. But it doesn’t flip all of the screens - it simply flips to the screen that someone is speaking on. Here’s a great pic where a tech was working to the left of the San Jose group - you can see half of her.

Within a few minutes of using the system, you truly forget that you’re actually at opposite ends of the country. it’s an amazingly comfortable experience. We were definitely impressed.

The Cisco Team

With hearts pounding and so many executives from Cisco, I tried to write down everyone’s names but simply lost track. It was a thrill to be face-to-face with Marthin De Beer, though! The Cisco team were casual, gracious, inviting and supportive hosts. Any fears of Randy, Paula and Simon quickly evaporated with the leadership team we had in front of us!

Enough! How did the Presentation go?

Trying to sell a billion dollar idea in 60 minutes is definitely a new experience. Bill was our spokesperson and the guy who kept the tempo of the meeting. I chimed in with as much industry data and experience I could. We knew the toughest hurdle was actually getting the team to recognize the solution and opportunity. Carla illustrated our slide deck to visually capture the mounds of data that we packed into each slide.

POS? Really?

When you say “Point of Sales” system, folks immediately think about a barcode scanner, an inventory database, and the ability to print a receipt and charge a credit card. That’s the paradigm that we had to shift in the first 30 minutes!

We had to get the team to recognize that the POS has much more potential to be the entire hub of the business with an opportunity to integrate into all other business processes - inventory control, food supply, employment, accounting, marketing, rewards, online ordering, kiosk ordering, wireless ordering, reporting, enterprise management, etc.

The reason why people see a POS as a ‘glorified cash register’ is that this is exactly what it’s been the last 50 years with very little change. The core of our idea for the finals is to make the POS the HUB of the restaurant, with a secure and reliable network to support any communications.

Perhaps the best part of the presentation was that, as we spoke, we could physically see the expressions on their faces change and the light bulbs turn on. Questions changed from ‘who, what, how much’ to ‘how about, do you picture, why not’. With a $17B industry, prospects that are disappointed with current offerings, and no vendor stepping to the plate - the restaurant industry is primed for disruption by a company with the resources of Cisco.

What’s Next?

By close of the meeting, we had talk of thin-net clients deployed with ideas of the “Restaurant in a Box” and alliances with vendor agnostic POS hardware clients. Yes!!!! That’s the picture that we wanted to paint all along. We had some very positive responses from the team, some good chemistry throughout, and we closed the meeting. Jason polished off the meeting letting the team know why a system would have been so essential to his success as a restaurateur.

I don’t believe it could have gone better! There is additional cost/benefit analysis that could be accomplished and we identified the resources to obtain that information to refine our business case. A few thousand dollars in industry reports would need to be scoured with a good analyst to come up with an accurate estimate.

Now we wait! Marthin closed the meeting with a statement of how interesting it was to hear others’ perceptions of what Cisco ‘was’ or ‘did’. We hope that they can visualize themselves into this space. This would solidify Cisco as the data backbone of commerce, first in the food service segment, and beyond to the entire retail industry.

The team ended the phone call and did a 30 minute debriefing. We wait until June to hear the results! Tick… tick… tick…

If Cisco does not choose us, we’ve already discussed the idea with some entrepreneurs, angel investors and venture capitalists here regionally. Without Cisco’s network and reach, this may be a tough idea to sell. That is, unless we get the funding and become their customer!

Perhaps every web designer or usability expert should ‘act out’ the functionality in their application. Here’s a brilliant video on how Facebook would look:

Thanks to Matt for the find!