Consulting for a Small Construction Company
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@scottalanmiller said in Consulting for a Small Construction Company:
@Carnival-Boy said in Consulting for a Small Construction Company:
"The solution you want, which is perfect for your needs, uses slightly out-dated technology, therefore please choose a different, inferior and more expensive solution"
Isn't that putting IT needs before business needs?
The two should be one and the same. And "slightly" outdated is totally missing the point. This is technology that was ridiculous to have been making since the late 1990s. Two decades of not bringing it up to date means that there is incredible business risk involved (based on averages.) This suggests that either we have unmaintaned code, a company that actively doesn't care about the needs of their clients or, most of the time, a company selling an old product that no longer has developers and they can't fix it if they need to.
You are making a wild assumption that this is superior or cheaper than modern, well made, supported software. I've never once seen that be true in a situation like this. What I've pointed out above is that companies that say that there is no other option (especially companies is super standard industries like this) is that they didn't look for options and just chose one bad one.
This is technology that many companies use today. There is not a damned thing wrong with a client-server model itself. It is all kinds of wrong for this situation, but you are making more blanket statements with no basis in fact.
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@scottalanmiller said in Consulting for a Small Construction Company:
@Dashrender said in Consulting for a Small Construction Company:
I've worked with a few small'ish industry businesses (alcohol distributors and HVAC distributors) They both used a product produced by a vendor inside those industries as their 20% uniqueness - both packages are just horrible from a design/support perspective, both required local admin and damn near impossible to make run as a non admin.
These software packages are so unique though, that I don't know if a third party software solution would really work for them, without going to extreme lengths to import the data from each vendor, then create the interdependence between components as the current solution provides.
It's frustrating to look at what some of these places have to deal with.
Just because the package is unique does not mean that it is useful, though. I've never heard anyone claim "competitive advantage" or "improved efficiency" or "improved profits" only ever "uniqueness" which is what people would say when they need a reason but don't have one for why they chose it. Uniqueness alone isn't an advantage.
In these cases, it's not about uniqueness, it's about functionality. Hand coding their own solution, assuming they could get the raw data to put into their own solution would cost many times what it costs to just buy the product from the vendor. Beyond that, I'm not sure what you are driving at.
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@Dashrender said in Consulting for a Small Construction Company:
@scottalanmiller said in Consulting for a Small Construction Company:
@Dashrender said in Consulting for a Small Construction Company:
I've worked with a few small'ish industry businesses (alcohol distributors and HVAC distributors) They both used a product produced by a vendor inside those industries as their 20% uniqueness - both packages are just horrible from a design/support perspective, both required local admin and damn near impossible to make run as a non admin.
These software packages are so unique though, that I don't know if a third party software solution would really work for them, without going to extreme lengths to import the data from each vendor, then create the interdependence between components as the current solution provides.
It's frustrating to look at what some of these places have to deal with.
Just because the package is unique does not mean that it is useful, though. I've never heard anyone claim "competitive advantage" or "improved efficiency" or "improved profits" only ever "uniqueness" which is what people would say when they need a reason but don't have one for why they chose it. Uniqueness alone isn't an advantage.
In these cases, it's not about uniqueness, it's about functionality. Hand coding their own solution, assuming they could get the raw data to put into their own solution would cost many times what it costs to just buy the product from the vendor. Beyond that, I'm not sure what you are driving at.
What I'm saying is that lots of companies make this claim that their businesses are "so unique" in their industry that they can't use standard tools (MS Office, QuickBooks, Sharepoint, what have you) but instead need "apps made for their industry." In some cases, it is certainly true, medical offices for example. But for many businesses, it's simply a marketing tactic. Lots of these companies claim uniqueness even though it turns out their special software does nothing special.
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Example... I've seen undertakers use custom software that costs an arm and a leg, is written like crap, doesn't work reliably and has all kinds of insane dependencies. Did it do something special to warrant using it? No. Excel would have been better.
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@scottalanmiller said in Consulting for a Small Construction Company:
Example... I've seen undertakers use custom software that costs an arm and a leg, is written like crap, doesn't work reliably and has all kinds of insane dependencies. Did it do something special to warrant using it? No. Excel would have been better.
Sure, in there case Excel might have worked, even though they would have to manually import all of their inventory into then create the flows (logic) that allows what part to go with what casket, etc).
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@Dashrender said in Consulting for a Small Construction Company:
@scottalanmiller said in Consulting for a Small Construction Company:
Example... I've seen undertakers use custom software that costs an arm and a leg, is written like crap, doesn't work reliably and has all kinds of insane dependencies. Did it do something special to warrant using it? No. Excel would have been better.
Sure, in there case Excel might have worked, even though they would have to manually import all of their inventory into then create the flows (logic) that allows what part to go with what casket, etc).
Right. But for the average business... this works. I'm not saying Excel specifically. But there are tons of standard tools developers for normal businesses. And they work for the majority of them. And the smaller you get, the more they make sense. And those industries that "need" special case software, there is almost always good software available. There are exceptions, but everyone thinks that their industry is the special case.
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@scottalanmiller said in Consulting for a Small Construction Company:
@Dashrender said in Consulting for a Small Construction Company:
@scottalanmiller said in Consulting for a Small Construction Company:
Example... I've seen undertakers use custom software that costs an arm and a leg, is written like crap, doesn't work reliably and has all kinds of insane dependencies. Did it do something special to warrant using it? No. Excel would have been better.
Sure, in there case Excel might have worked, even though they would have to manually import all of their inventory into then create the flows (logic) that allows what part to go with what casket, etc).
Right. But for the average business... this works. I'm not saying Excel specifically. But there are tons of standard tools developers for normal businesses. And they work for the majority of them. And the smaller you get, the more they make sense. And those industries that "need" special case software, there is almost always good software available. There are exceptions, but everyone thinks that their industry is the special case.
I really wish that was the case for the HVAC group I'm working with now - sadly it's not.
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What kind of special case software do they need?
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Building HVAC systems. You pick the chassis, then you are shown only a list of items allowed for that chassis. Sure you can do this with Excel or some other Access like DB, sure don't want to use Access. But then you'd still have to have the software installed somewhere so you can get the raw data (you're lucky if you don't have to pull it out by hand) and import it into your system and then make sure the logic is correct.
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@Dashrender said in Consulting for a Small Construction Company:
Building HVAC systems. You pick the chassis, then you are shown only a list of items allowed for that chassis. Sure you can do this with Excel or some other Access like DB, sure don't want to use Access. But then you'd still have to have the software installed somewhere so you can get the raw data (you're lucky if you don't have to pull it out by hand) and import it into your system and then make sure the logic is correct.
This kind of thing should be all web based and pulling from a vendor provided API or even XML export or something.
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@Dashrender said in Consulting for a Small Construction Company:
Building HVAC systems. You pick the chassis, then you are shown only a list of items allowed for that chassis. Sure you can do this with Excel or some other Access like DB, sure don't want to use Access. But then you'd still have to have the software installed somewhere so you can get the raw data (you're lucky if you don't have to pull it out by hand) and import it into your system and then make sure the logic is correct.
Most ERP systems can do configuration and validation automatically without having a user look into it. Most web fronts, even FOSS ones, can do this too with minimal configuration.
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@Dashrender said in Consulting for a Small Construction Company:
Building HVAC systems. You pick the chassis, then you are shown only a list of items allowed for that chassis. Sure you can do this with Excel or some other Access like DB, sure don't want to use Access. But then you'd still have to have the software installed somewhere so you can get the raw data (you're lucky if you don't have to pull it out by hand) and import it into your system and then make sure the logic is correct.
What's complex about that that you would need much of anything at all? This sounds like, unless I'm missing something big, exactly what common tools are built for. What's unique or special to HVAC here?
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This is why I recommended a VPS. They can whatever proprietary software they want to run and run it in the cloud.
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@scottalanmiller said in Consulting for a Small Construction Company:
@Dashrender said in Consulting for a Small Construction Company:
Building HVAC systems. You pick the chassis, then you are shown only a list of items allowed for that chassis. Sure you can do this with Excel or some other Access like DB, sure don't want to use Access. But then you'd still have to have the software installed somewhere so you can get the raw data (you're lucky if you don't have to pull it out by hand) and import it into your system and then make sure the logic is correct.
What's complex about that that you would need much of anything at all? This sounds like, unless I'm missing something big, exactly what common tools are built for. What's unique or special to HVAC here?
I guess it's simply getting access to the actual data. If the vendor will send over a csv, then it wouldn't be that hard...
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@Dashrender said in Consulting for a Small Construction Company:
I guess it's simply getting access to the actual data. If the vendor will send over a csv, then it wouldn't be that hard...
Is this a matter of vendors denying access to data and only providing the info via their own configuration utility? So they need one from each vendor?
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@scottalanmiller said in Consulting for a Small Construction Company:
@Dashrender said in Consulting for a Small Construction Company:
I guess it's simply getting access to the actual data. If the vendor will send over a csv, then it wouldn't be that hard...
Is this a matter of vendors denying access to data and only providing the info via their own configuration utility? So they need one from each vendor?
correct.
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@Dashrender said in Consulting for a Small Construction Company:
@scottalanmiller said in Consulting for a Small Construction Company:
@Dashrender said in Consulting for a Small Construction Company:
I guess it's simply getting access to the actual data. If the vendor will send over a csv, then it wouldn't be that hard...
Is this a matter of vendors denying access to data and only providing the info via their own configuration utility? So they need one from each vendor?
correct.
Huge problem really. which brings this conversation around to the PBS everything open source thread.
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@Dashrender said in Consulting for a Small Construction Company:
@scottalanmiller said in Consulting for a Small Construction Company:
@Dashrender said in Consulting for a Small Construction Company:
I guess it's simply getting access to the actual data. If the vendor will send over a csv, then it wouldn't be that hard...
Is this a matter of vendors denying access to data and only providing the info via their own configuration utility? So they need one from each vendor?
correct.
Maybe this is more work than it's worth. But can't they get that out of the current system they have and add it to an ERP system? Or does it change that much that it wouldn't be reliable?
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@Dashrender said in Consulting for a Small Construction Company:
@scottalanmiller said in Consulting for a Small Construction Company:
@Dashrender said in Consulting for a Small Construction Company:
I guess it's simply getting access to the actual data. If the vendor will send over a csv, then it wouldn't be that hard...
Is this a matter of vendors denying access to data and only providing the info via their own configuration utility? So they need one from each vendor?
correct.
That should all go into the calculation as to why that vendor is overly expensive.
The vendor actually is denying access to their parts data? This seems really unlikely. You've spoken to the vendor and they actually won't provide the data?
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@scottalanmiller said in Consulting for a Small Construction Company:
@Dashrender said in Consulting for a Small Construction Company:
@scottalanmiller said in Consulting for a Small Construction Company:
@Dashrender said in Consulting for a Small Construction Company:
I guess it's simply getting access to the actual data. If the vendor will send over a csv, then it wouldn't be that hard...
Is this a matter of vendors denying access to data and only providing the info via their own configuration utility? So they need one from each vendor?
correct.
That should all go into the calculation as to why that vendor is overly expensive.
The vendor actually is denying access to their parts data? This seems really unlikely. You've spoken to the vendor and they actually won't provide the data?
This is not uncommon at all. It is very common that manufacturers will strike deals with dealers and only provide information via that chain.
