Helping Out Old Friends – On The Road
On Wednesday I got a call from some old friends in trouble. They were the first clients I had when I opened up my own consulting shop in Indianapolis in 1992. Their $2700 for Beacon an office management system for eye doctors kept us in business for several months at the beginning, and made all the difference (in my mind) between relative success and absolute failure. I owe them a lot.
Over the years, they have called every now and then with some problem that they can't get solved. Maybe it's putting in the first network in their shop, or moving shops and doing it all again, or setting up a back-up system or problems with the program they got about 13 yrs ago to replace Beacon.
VSP became big, and something that could deal with it directly had a distinct advantage. I wasn't upset - I'd had a good run, and now it was time for a better solution to their problems.
So when they called on Wednesday it wasn't completely out of the blue.
Their problems this time were really two-fold: iffy system, and bad support. I can't really do a lot about the first, but I can see what I can do about the second. It's a database system where the developer expected the users to realize it's a database system and understand things like records, tables, forms, etc.
Face it, that's not really something you're going to teach someone on the job unless they are critical to your business. People come and go, and systems like this should not require this kind of knowledge. The system I wrote for them was built in Paradox 3.5 for DOS, which was a database system, but it didn't require them to know it. Just use it like a delivered application.
This is really a different way of developing software. The author expected the users to meet him half-way to the problem. I know better. The best software meets the user right where they are. They shouldn't have to move. That's educational software.
So I'm off to help out friends today. It's a long drive, but in the end, I'll be glad I made the trip.