Perhaps a new subscription structure.

I ran into software today that had the following pricing for updates
and support:

about $200 per seat for software updates

about $1,000 for yearly support for the entire site.

This make a ton of sense to me. You can get updates without support or
support without updates. Now that is democratic. You can vote with your
wallet.

 

I brought this idea (or one similar) up to some SW employees at SWW. It
didn't go over well.

 

I would strongly agree with this statement. My experience has been that
new users will use tech support initially to fill in the blanks from
training and then will move toward bug reporting if they do anything at
all. Also, many VARs have gone to email based support in recent years
which doesn't lend itself to training fill in.

While this may be true for smaller more independent users, large
corporate users probably wouldn't fit into this model except as lurkers
simply because large IT departments may limit access to places like
comp.cad.solidworks and SW may dedicate other resources to them..

The newsgroup (this one and others) is generally far more responsive,
but also far less connected to the mothership in terms of the answers
given.

And it would seem from the meteoric rise in the number of users (as
reported at SWW) that SW has the VARs focussed on one thing, selling
new seats and not on support. To go from 350k users to 500k in one year
is pretty impressive. This would also suggest that a large percentage
of SW budget is focussed on sales and that support is static or growing
more slowly.

So back to your original observation, "That would be a great economy
for users." If SW continues the drive to out of the box quality that
they started with 2006, then the last major reason for tech support
calls will be greatly reduced and a subscription model that separates
tech support from bug fixes and new features would be in the users best
interest as well as SW. As we saw from the recent Autodesk poll, SW is
down to about six issues and then it will be perfect ( tongue in cheek
comment there.)

 

I agree that the value for customers would be better, to be able to
choose how you spend your money, but SW has been successful with the
current scheme, and I don't see anything mandating a change from their
point of view.

For me personally, it's more than a little insulting to pay for support
from a reseller who employs complete beginners to do support. They add
no "value" to the software.

In spite of all of this, though, I do try to send issues to the
reseller. The reason isn't so that I can get help, I'm always way past
it by the time they even open the email. The reason is so that the
software can get fixed. I know it's a pain to spoon feed tech support
an issue in a way that they can understand it, and it's a pain to make
them understand that they still need to send it to SolidWorks even if I
have a workaround, and even if what I'm doing seems like a bad idea to
them. The point is that the software doesn't get fixed if SW doesn't
know there's a problem, and they probably don't know your problem unless
you send it in. Even if they have seen it once before, they need to
know how many people are seeing the problem so they know which problems
to fix first. Users tend to assume problems just get fixed, but they
don't unless you do something.

A lot of people say "I'm not in the software business, I don't have time
to report problems". That's an attitude that will only lead to the
mediocre software quality we have today.

"Should" SW do a better job of writing higher quality software? Well,
yes, but the rhetorical difference between "should" and "does" is that
practical chasm that caused the 3 crashes I had yesterday.

So even though it's a pain in the ass and it takes time that you would
prefer to spend on something else, I encourage people to send in bugs.
For the last month I've been trying to send in everything I come across
instead of glossing over it, and frankly, the reseller is overwhelmed.
When I'm doing certain types of work, I send in 5-6 problems a day.
Yes, I do expect them to work for the money they get from me.

Sorry for the long rant, but this needs to be said. Now go report some
bugs.

matt

 

matt wrote:
....snip

Matt,

You know my position on this aspect of the problem. For the rest I'll
share it. While it is currently true that if we don't report it it
won't get fixed, if so many problems come along that we almost need a
secretary to help documenting problems, that is not productive either.
For whatever reason, I think SW has let things slide a little bit too
much toward letting users catch problems and appeasement.

My analogy is that we carry a spare in our cars in case of a flat. We
only carry one, and most of use will never use it. When we do we are
thankful we have it. But if things got to the point that we had to have
permanently installed jacks on four corners of our car and a trunkfull
of spares we might get a little bit perturbed. When applying this other
company's maintenance/support cost structure to SW it would focus the
money on the problem and less on the bandaid.

I still think back to the original 3 Amigos meeting. We got better
diagnostic and reporting tools, SPR listings and such, but problems
like the infamous randomly splitting feature tree problem which we
pointed out in that meeting still haven't been addressed. That was five
years ago. Now if there was a standard or reference that said the
feature tree should end up split under this or that condition and not
under any others the software could then be tested before it every got
onto a CD for distribution and we could worry about voting on the few
really weighty bugs that got through.

Finally, if a customer experiences a bug, they have already lost time
and money at the least and a deadline at the worst.

 

That happens now for beta/pr.

I think the word "should" provokes a certain reaction in me. It's easy
to say what "should" be, but I think that word is just a euphamism for
"I'm not gonna do anything about it, it's the other guy's
responsibility". It turns out to be a justification for feeling morally
superior and doing nothing.

That's why I participate in beta/pr and report bugs.

I don't think we disagree that things "should" improve, but the question
is what do we do to make that happen.

 

I'm not really worried about the time it takes to submit bugs. I beta test
and submit all the bugs I find as well as submitting bugs through out the
released version. Bugs just seem to be a fact of software life and even
though I wish there were less of them I realize they will never go away.

My issue with SW Subscription is this. We are a small company that owns
three seats. We maintain full subscription on those seats. I've been using
the software for 6 years and I rarely need the use of my VAR, not because
they aren't good but because I either fix the issue my self (workaround) or
the issue isn't a problem of me not understanding the software its the
software not working correctly and the VAR can do nothing to fix this except
submit it for an SPR. As I said I beta test pretty heavily and by the time
the released version is sent on CD I've already found and submitted the bugs
that will effect me. SW then takes the next 5 or 6 SP's to fix these bugs
(yes I agree some bugs NEVER get fixed). If we have a user with an issue I
can typically fix it myself. Even though we carry full subscription on 3
seats how often do I have 3 users all on the phone with the VAR tech support
simultaneously? Never. Some of my subscription dollars are being used for
VAR tech support except I very rarely use this feature. I use subscription
for 2 things, upgrades and SP's.

So I brought up the idea of having different levels of subscription support
at SWW (2nd time I have done this). I'd like to have the option to carry
full support (as it is now) on one seat (that way I have access to my VAR if
I absolutely need it) and base support (upgrades and SP's only) on the other
seats. Sounds like a fair and reasonable idea to me. I don't want to get
into the specifics of the conversation I had with SW but I can tell you they
don't see it that way.

 

20% of the purchase price is pretty much industry standard to the software
industry for maintenance fees. Given that 20% is the standard, what isn't a
standard is how much of that money is re-invested in R&D. Some companies
invest more and some invest less. Some have a parent company that siphons
some of the profits and others don't. Some are divested in many different
market sectors and others are concentrated in only one. The interesting
thing to see, is for all that money they bring in, what is actually used to
make the product that generated that money, better???

Ken

 

That is a good point. The software I originally got the idea from was
charging the support part for an additional $1,000 or so. The $200 was
about 20%. My guess is that SW gets about half of what we pay for
maintenance and the other half goes to the VAR. So they might be
getting by on 10 to 15%. Some VARS like CATI charge extra for a higher
level of support than reporting bugs. So if SW can get by on half what
we pay now for the service packs and new releases then the VARs can
charge for support and would have to earn it.

 

It was my understanding that you don't have to be on subscription to
get service packs. You have to get them through the VAR you purchased
from though, you can't just download it.

I'm surprised they haven't posted service packs tot he public yet as
most all software does, even Autodesk posts service packs for all their
software (Inventor included) to the public.

So really, they should just post the SPs for all customers that bought
Solidworks, then just provide the subscription the way it is for
upgrades to new versions, phone support, etc.

Rob, I can kind of see why they wouldn't want a customer with multiple
seats to only pay full subscription on one seats and no or reduced all
the rest. Technically you could receive full support for all those
seats but not really pay for it.

Now maybe some sort of "enhanced" support through the software
interface (Like Alibre) would help with that thus allowing multiple
layers of subscription support.

 

This will NEVER happen. The subscriptions costs are a MAJOR source of
revenue for both the VAR's and SWx Corp. If memory serves me correct,
the VAR's keep 50% (if they are "certified") of the subscription
revenue.

Chris
===========================================================================
Chris

 

Agreed. It is nice to think about more friendly pricing schemes, but
it's not going to happen.

Matt

 

Ken,

Oh, yeah, I completely agree with that.

So what are you gonna do? Stop paying maintenance? Buy other software
that has a "friendly and morally superior pricing scheme"? Torch an
embassy perhaps?

I agree that it seems unfair, but I got over that "fair" bit a long time
ago. Businesses don't have a moral conscience. "Fair" is whatever you
let someone get away with. Being indignant about something that's
unfair isn't going to shame them into letting you keep some of your
money that you used to give them. Maybe having been too close to the
business side of engineering has kind of jaded me a bit, but I fully
expect capitalism to do things to me that aren't fair. Somehow, I'm not
living in a grass hut, though, so I can't say how unfair it really is.

I'm not trying to piss you off, if you can believe it. I'm just a
little amazed at people's belief that companies should have a sense of
shame for taking money that you give them of your own free will. You
see it happening, and yet you still send the money. If you don't like
it, vote with your wallet. That's the only real leverage you've got
against an amoral capitalist.

 

And hence the newsgroup where wackos, fair minded people, sages and
philosophers, newbies and old grouches can meet on level ground. No
question will go unanswered and no fraud will get by without being
defrocked. It's like being on Rush Limbaugh without having to put up
with Limbaugh.

Bad segue, bad, bad, segue.

SW has in fact been changing some of it's pricing structure. While the
original $3,995 price and the $1,295 maintenance fee still stands (at
least in the US) SW will gladly add many other "administrative" fees
where no fees existed before. And we won't mention the egregious fees
SW charges in Europe. And then there is the constantly changing
"Office" price structure. That the core prices have not gone up is
pretty astounding considering that what cost $3995 in 1995 would cost
$4970.46 in 2005 and that with a lot more functionality. Probably the
only thing that keeps prices down are the increasing sales and broader
user base for which we eternally heap blame on SW marketing albeit by
putting in fluff features instead of fully tested and debugged
functionality. So maybe on this score SW has done us a slight favor.

But I would still like to be able to vote with my wallet rather than on
those flat screen LCD's they put up all over SWW, but the only way a
reduced maintenance only fee would work is if it brought in more non
subscription customers back.

 

That's your resolution too? I thought I was the only one. Who knows,
now that cartoons can ignite that sort of behavior.

I'm independent, so I guess I do it on my own time.

Ah, good for you. I wish I had the guts to do that, or to not do that.

matt