Onedrive is shrinking
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@BRRABill said:
@JaredBusch said:
You should not have a big client that does not have a concept of what you say is the best thing for their business and that they better take it seriously.
Our big clients are really big. The people we deal with have no say with IT, and can barely even reach out to them.
It's always all we can do to work through issues to get them what they need and keep everyone happy.
If you are not dealing with IT decision makers, I have to ask WTF are you doing with them? Or are you meaning these are non-IT clients?
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@JaredBusch said:
If you are not dealing with IT decision makers, I have to ask WTF are you doing with them? Or are you meaning these are non-IT clients?
Yes, on the non-IT side of our business they are all non-IT. And so far removed as to have no say in their IT operations.
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@BRRABill said:
You act like anyone can just tell their clients "yeah you have to install openoffice" or "no, you can't have the deliverables".
They do what they want, and we have to adapt, or we find new clients.
Yup, you find new clients. That's how it works. That's certainly one solution.
If your clients aren't taking your advice, what are you providing for them? it's not that we wont' do work, but when we explain why they should do certain things they listen - because they pay us for exactly this advice. If they aren't going to listen that would make them insane. Why would you pay for advice you aren't going to listen to?
Do they listen every single time? No. But nearly so. Because we always make a good business case that is well thought through and presented and explained. We don't recommend things that don't have a viable business case.
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@scottalanmiller said:
We don't recommend things that don't have a viable business case.
This is the key thing here. It is something that you enable by not using the MSP model.
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@BRRABill said:
I am talking on the non-IT side of our business.
We've been in business for almost 50 years, and didn't get there by firing clients.
Not saying it's not the right thing to do. Just not for everyone. And certainly not for big clients.
I don't follow this. Is this really consulting? If your clients don't listen to you, what are they paying you for? Or do you just tell them what they want to hear?
You have long term clients that don't trust you? What conditions exist where you give good advice, make a good business case, the clients think you are nuts and they do their own thing and they keep writing you checks.
Am I missing how this is working?
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@BRRABill said:
@JaredBusch said:
If you are not dealing with IT decision makers, I have to ask WTF are you doing with them? Or are you meaning these are non-IT clients?
Yes, on the non-IT side of our business they are all non-IT. And so far removed as to have no say in their IT operations.
Okay but.... what does any of this have to do with the discussion then? I don't see the connection. As an IT consultancy our customers don't take our accounting advice because they aren't paying us to provide it and we don't provide that. The discussion at hand was about how to deal with clients - customers paying for advice and not listening. Right?
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@JaredBusch said:
@scottalanmiller said:
We don't recommend things that don't have a viable business case.
This is the key thing here. It is something that you enable by not using the MSP model.
Good point. The MSP model is really about doing what they want. It, on its own, is not a consulting model. It's just a support model, like taking your car into the shop and asking them to change the oil. They don't really give you an oil changing opinion, just change it and slap a 3,500 mile sticker on the windshield. That's it.
When you bring in a consultant, you are paying for advice. The consultant can also do work, but the core value is in the advice. Just like internal IT would provide. If they aren't listening, they would be crazy to maintain the relationship.
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I work for two businesses.
One is a MSP/IT consultancy that is rather new.
For the other, I am an IT guy for a company that does market research for larger companies. Fortune 500. Our deliverable is reports. In THAT side of the business, we do what our contacts want us to do. Our contacts can barely talk to their IT department, let alone us. They would literally either
a-not respond or
b- laugh us out of the room
if we tried suggesting to them to do any of the things you guys are suggesting. Heavy odds on A.It is possible that perhaps they are using the latest and greatest, as @scottalanmiller has said all F500 companies are, but that doesn't mean ALL our clients are using the same stuff, and it's been our experience they either aren't, or our contacts are familiar with it,.
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i agree 100% on the MSP/consulting side.
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@BRRABill said:
I work for two businesses.
One is a MSP/IT consultancy that is rather new.
For the other, I am an IT guy for a company that does market research for larger companies. Fortune 500. Our deliverable is reports. In THAT side of the business, we do what our contacts want us to do. Our contacts can barely talk to their IT department, let alone us. They would literally either
a-not respond or
b- laugh us out of the room
if we tried suggesting to them to do any of the things you guys are suggesting. Heavy odds on A.It is possible that perhaps they are using the latest and greatest, as @scottalanmiller has said all F500 companies are, but that doesn't mean ALL our clients are using the same stuff, and it's been our experience they either aren't, or our contacts are familiar with it,.
And, if I am following the jumping around... you are saying that you deliver reports for your customers to edit so that they are collaborating with you on the report rather than being the customer who receives the report and you are sending them Word 2007 documents instead of PDFs because they are going to modify your reports using old tools before passing on to others to consume?
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@scottalanmiller said:
And, if I am following the jumping around... you are saying that you deliver reports for your customers to edit so that they are collaborating with you on the report rather than being the customer who receives the report and you are sending them Word 2007 documents instead of PDFs because they are going to modify your reports using old tools before passing on to others to consume?
Sometimes. And back in the day we moved to Office because it was the only thing that worked.
It might be different now, but all of our F500 clients still use Office. Or at least have ZERO issues with the files we provide
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@BRRABill said:
@scottalanmiller said:
And, if I am following the jumping around... you are saying that you deliver reports for your customers to edit so that they are collaborating with you on the report rather than being the customer who receives the report and you are sending them Word 2007 documents instead of PDFs because they are going to modify your reports using old tools before passing on to others to consume?
Sometimes. And back in the day we moved to Office because it was the only thing that worked.
It might be different now, but all of our F500 clients still use Office. Or at least have ZERO issues with the files we provide
Sure, but they all can read PDFs, too, right? With PDFs you know that they are getting exactly what you intend. With Word files you know only that they haven't complained or noticed.
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@scottalanmiller said:
Sure, but they all can read PDFs, too, right? With PDFs you know that they are getting exactly what you intend. With Word files you know only that they haven't complained or noticed.
Sure, we mostly give PDF. But when they are paying the check and ask for the source file, we give it to them. And they want it in Office format.
Not something we want to do a lot. But it does happen.
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See, that is a bit different. I feel like you leave out the main details. You are using Word to make PDFs. Once in a while someone requests a source format. They want Word. That's fine. That's not the same at all as working in Word files.
I bet if you were giving them new Word, or ancient Word or LibreOffice generated Word that they would not complain either, especially as the deliverable is PDF.
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@scottalanmiller said:
I bet if you were giving them new Word, or ancient Word or LibreOffice generated Word that they would not complain either, especially as the deliverable is PDF.
As I have said, in the past we have had issues with formatting. Even if it happens once, it can be an issue. It was a regular issue.
Since we are currently having NO issues, and our client request Office files, and since we haven't paid for Office in 8 years, we are doing OK.
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@BRRABill said:
As I have said, in the past we have had issues with formatting. Even if it happens once, it can be an issue. It was a regular issue.
it's a major issue even when the deliverable is PDF?
Or was this perhaps before you were delivering PDF?
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@scottalanmiller said:
it's a major issue even when the deliverable is PDF?
Or was this perhaps before you were delivering PDF?
Yes, it was an issue back in the day.
It's definitely something I will look into. But from all I've heard our clients are using Office still and want an Office file. If the other products can deliver that, then we might move to that. Or just stay on 2007.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@BRRABill said:
As I have said, in the past we have had issues with formatting. Even if it happens once, it can be an issue. It was a regular issue.
it's a major issue even when the deliverable is PDF?
Or was this perhaps before you were delivering PDF?
I'm guessing it was an issue when the request was for an editable version and that version wasn't in a Word format.
Back when he would have been looking at OpenOffice instead of Office 2007, There were many output/view differences between Word 2007 and OpenOffice of the day.As I stated before, this is why we didn't go that route. Our existing documents did not look correct when we opened them in OpenOffice. I'm assuming the same would be true for documents created in OO would not look as intended in Office 2007 at the time.
So this makes me wonder - let's assume the same problem exists today, that the formatting between LibreOffice and MS Office don't mix well. Would you suggest moving to LO for the 99%, and then @BRRABill company have one or two Office installs to fix the files when the client asks for them in an editable format?
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@Dashrender said:
So this makes me wonder - let's assume the same problem exists today, that the formatting between LibreOffice and MS Office don't mix well. Would you suggest moving to LO for the 99%, and then @BRRABill company have one or two Office installs to fix the files when the client asks for them in an editable format?
Good thinking. That's kind of where we are. I have LibreOffice since I'm on Linux. My secretary has MS Office 2013. Never comes up, but if she needed to tweak my files she could.
I know that formatting issues can exist, but in my own experience I've only run into issues personally dealing with people using Word and me also using Word, never when I ran OO or LO.
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@Dashrender said:
As I stated before, this is why we didn't go that route. Our existing documents did not look correct when we opened them in OpenOffice. I'm assuming the same would be true for documents created in OO would not look as intended in Office 2007 at the time.
It was a train wreck. We do lots of custom tables and charts and stuff. OO (Open Office? I always check my acronyms here) was a mess and a half.
Everyone works on these files in the office, so it doesn't really make sense to have a mixed usage of Office and OO.
But, that was years ago ... who knows today? We could certainly try.
But it was SOOOO bad before, anyone here would be very hesitant, including myself.
