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Re: Doomed again

G-Tek28-Aug-14 1:55

G-Tek

28-Aug-14 1:55

There is definitely some things to be concerned about here, but the biggest in my books is that this company was already a minimum of decade behind before you even mention mobile/tablets. You're not trying to catch up on the last couple of years of doing nothing - you're trying to catch up on over a decade of not upgrading the product. DOS-based? Flat-files? Can you create a tablet solution to show off at a trade show in the next few months? Sure. Can you create a working tablet solution that is connected to a "turn-of-the-century" POS solution in that time frame? Hard to say because I don't know how complex the system is, how many people have been working on it, and how much work has already been done. But I don't think it matters how many resources you have to throw at it at this point if you're not already very close to being there. The core concern though is the approach taken to this - is the system being updated or is the approach to make the absolute minimum changes necessary to "look updated". The phrase "lipstick on a pig" comes to mind if its the latter.

My two cents for the company - if the situation is truly as you have depicted it and they are this far behind, there is simply no way that the product will be brought up-to-speed with the competitor you mentioned in that short a time frame unless the POS is very simple or there's been a really good team working on it for the past year+. Otherwise trying to do it and push it to market has a high likelihood of failure - customers that may have been willing to wait for a decent solution will jump ship sooner once word spreads that the first attempt at entering the 21st century is a horribly designed, bug-ridden failure that lacks half the features of your competitors and your legacy system. Not that the company can afford a "take the time to do it right" approach given where they are! If they are this far behind in product innovation there is likely little you can do about many of the customers you're going to lose in the next 6-12 months, but that doesn't mean the business will close its doors either (though there are many factors we don't have here like the qty of existing customers, sales force activities, whether revenues streams are sales based or service based, the specific market this POS is targeted at, does the competition's product have the same features, product stability, and price, etc.). Get a good team together to work on a solid solution to bring to market in the next year and consider short-term plugs to satisfy existing customers that may be itching to leave (which can be anything from a lipstick website that runs off a tablet to "loyalty" discounts - remember, most people don't want to have to change because change is scary and expensive).

Advice to you - if they aren't prepared to tackle the problem correctly then there's likely little point in trying to stick around that sinking ship (unless, of course, you can't find another job quickly!).

On the plus side - you guys are not the first company to face this challenge. Someone needs to do some serious research and learn from the successes and failures of the other companies in the same situation. For some companies this may mean paying a consultant some stupid amount of money to tell the owners/management the exact same thing that they're employees have been telling them for years.

To carry forward the analogy... The ship IS sinking, but the crew and passengers aren't doomed - but you've got to build a better ship (and do it responsibly, but quickly) - one that runs on wind and solar polar instead of coal and steam. Building a quick life boat and shoving all of the passengers on it will do nothing more than make it clear to all of the passengers that the ship is in fact sinking, the lifeboat doesn't have near the amenities of the ship they paid for, and that the crew has no plans beyond that. At this point the passengers will just wait for the next ship that comes passing by to save them - and given the choice they'll jump on the competitor's ship at this point before jumping on one of yours.

Re: Doomed again

loctrice28-Aug-14 2:15

loctrice

28-Aug-14 2:15

Yeah, you make a lot of good points.

We have been making small products/features at the requests of our customers. We've turned out lots of neat looking websites, and other in house tools for them. Web ordering isn't an option we can go with, because of tech difficulties with convention centers.

We've been doing what we can. I'm the only developer for new software, and for updating. We have something of a manager, but he's not really able to program very much. He does help maintain some of the legacy stuff so that I can get more done.

Our system is POS - like. It's not a fully featured POS system. It's used in trade shows, but the easiest way to communicate it to other people is just saying POS.

The system isn't really that complicated. It's hard for the people running the small business to get their head around that. We've had to make very slow incremental changes. So we have a database available now, but we still have to support the flat file system. Once we create the table program - which is just a wpf program using sql express on a windows tablet - then we can start phasing out the flat files quickly. It would have been faster to just make a rewrite, but that is really scary for the owner.

You were right in that the challenge is that they are so far behind. Our internet ordering and at-show ordering can't even be considered the same system... so it has challenges with reporting. That's all stuff we are addressing. Right now we have an option, but as you can imagine with old technologies, it's still not idea. We have to use a web site I created to send files back to the office for processing.... not exactly real time. There are many challenges like this. Most of them are compounded by the owner (he helped write teh original, and hasn't learned anything new since qbx.)

I knew that it was going to be a lot of work when I was re-hired. I'm just freaking out because the customer list keeps getting shorter and , on top of that, the travel expenses of the company have been "putting our profit margins under pressure".

I'm going to ride it out until there's nowhere left to turn. If it works, then I'll be a hero Smile | :)

If not, then I'll be on unemployment looking for another job.

Elephant elephant elephant, sunshine sunshine sunshine

Re: Doomed again

G-Tek28-Aug-14 8:11

G-Tek

28-Aug-14 8:11

That does give a more clear picture of things. To be fair, it's easy to fall behind in tech - especially these days. Having the original owner still involved and either insistent that the old stuff still works or that the redev is not worth it is harmful as newbies trying to insist that a complete redev is necessary every time a new language/framework/etc comes out. Still, running a DOS app would certainly put the company in the minority of successful companies in today's world. Finding a good way to bridge between the old and new "gracefully" is certainly one of the bigger challenges so there's no doubt that you have your work cut out for you. I can't believe (no matter how talented you may be) that they're putting the fate of the company in a single developers hands. That's a lot of pressure on you. We have a local company here that I believe was getting into the tradeshow market as well - I even talked to them at one time about mutual opportunities since we have done a lot of work with Kiosks, which have become quite popular at trade shows.

Keep your head down and good luck!

Hoo Bloomin Ray!

glennPattonWork327-Aug-14 2:56

glennPattonWork3

27-Aug-14 2:56

Hi All,
I am now typing in my finals hours with my current employer. Following the advice I have had faffing has ruled the day since I was told. The upside to this is the software (the VB thing) has not (yet) gone wrong. That is a relief! Now I wondering how to unhook my Drop Box account from my PC, will simply uninstalling it work? Confused | :confused:

Glenn

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