On saving the deal

Yet another demonstration, this time at a Major Player In The Auto Industry. It's the second time I've been there, giving the same demo to the same people; they were not seriously interested last year, but the matter appears to have acquired some urgency since then.

We talked for two hours about the product, how it works (in the sense of design philosophy and anticipated workflow patterns) and how they might use it; then spent another hour talking about money, whereby a clever idea snatched victory from the jaws of defeat (to coin a phrase).

MPITAI has an active and hostile Purchasing Department to contend with (as in most large companies), they cannot buy software without knowing all the present and future costs involved.

I cannot tell them what the cost of future upgrades as yet unplanned will be, because it's out of my hands: It depends on the licensing policy and pricing of the database toolkit manufacturers on that day. I can state on past precedent, and my knowledge of the company, that the cost will not be less than 150 Euros nor more than 400 Euros; but where exactly it will lie is beyond any mortal knowledge. I doubt whether the manufacturer itself thinks that far ahead.

We chased these facts around in a circle for a while as the deal appeared to run itself into the ground, then I had the aforementioned clever idea. Rather than buying software now, and then buying an upgrade for an unknown price in the future, why don't we lease the software to MPITAI for a fixed term at a fixed price? I named a figure which represented half of the purchase price, plus the probable-worst-case of 400 Euros, plus a generous compensation for having to do all this thinking. MPITAI jumped for joy.

Add to that the installation package, a day of training, and importing their existing data from Excel: it all adds up to a very nice little deal. Fingers crossed.

And now: The sky is blue, the sun is shining, the swallows are on the wing; this would be a good time for my morning walk.