From the (July-August-Sept.)
2002 Newsletter
Why is our statistical
process control software so cheap? Some cannot believe that
it is $150.00. Well that is simple. Six
Sigma. You do not pay for what you do not need. If you
cannot get a return on a software investment in a reasonable
amount of time, you cannot get to Six Sigma. (Include
training time and maintenance updates price as well)
Example, we do not print a brochure. A
brochure is nothing more than an advertisement for a product
that only tells you what they want you to know, which may or may
not be what you actually wanted to know. When I worked at
Motorola I would get brochures and after looking them over, had
to call the companies anyway to find out the real stuff I needed
to know. Then I would throw the brochures away. They take time
to write, maintain, print and send. All adds directly to the
cost of the product you are trying to purchase. There should be
some kind of information though. All of ours is on the WEB. This
eliminates the printing and sending part of it, which out of the
4 issues listed above is 50%.
We charge if you want a CD. 90% to 95%
of our customers do not need a CD. Why should those 90% to 95%
pay for the 5% to 10% of the companies that do want or require a
CD?
We do not hire outside advertising
agencies or go to trade shows or advertise in publications. Why,
because all that stuff cost money and is extremely political. If
our primary market was the fortune 500 companies and we were
charging thousands of dollars for our stuff, then we could
justify it, but that is not what we are about. This of course
saves money, and we pass that saving on. It is just common
sense.
We use vendors to process credit card
orders. Why? Same reasons why your company uses vendors. It
cheaper for us, and that is reflected in the price.
Customer support. Just ask any 'big
wig' at Microsoft how much customer support costs for a software
company and you'll find out it is a big part of the cost of the
software. If you have a simple product that anyone can run, then
support calls are close to nonexistent. Only about 1 out of
every 20 customers need support and 90% of those are because the
customer has not logged onto the customer support forum or they
have not read the help file. Pretty much, if you have ran Excel
or Access then you can sit down and start running our software.
Most of the time it only takes 15 minutes for us to get one of
our customers up and running, when they have not read the help
file or logged onto the customer support forum. This is also why
we zip the file for you to download. If the end user is savvy
enough to unzip a file, there a certain amount of support
questions we will not have to answer.
Is it because the simpler a system is,
the fewer opportunities there are for errors, ergo, the fewer
support calls. Common Sense!
It is apparently such a good idea that
now some of our competitors now do the same thing.
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