Re: Is Micro Focus doomed?

Judson McClendon wrote:
Sorry, Jimmy, I give up. Donald is correct: I keep getting the run around on price. 

Sorry for following - I'm so bloody long-winded :-

Well I had hoped otherwise - but if you are getting the run around - that's indicative that they aren't playing it straight.

Inevitably this has to start with the bean-counters. There is that very up front concern now in today's commerce, 'Ensure you make profits, the shareholders expect an annual return'. Nothing new in that, and the reason stock company adventurers came into existence in the 1600s. Nevertheless, in our modern cut-throat commerce, 'Make a profit and give a dividend' is paramount to any CEO's thinking. His alternative - he gets golden-bowler-hatted, if he's smart and ensures he has a golden parachute clause.

So the bean-counters, based on projected units sold, and assuming they did their job correctly, will have come up with financial projections, using units sold and a mix of consumer-end prices - no big deal as a problem for any Spread*** package. So bean-counters plus management have arrived at a formula that gives them a 'safe' income by DEMANDING that you purchase those coupon books up front before you have even written a line of code. (Then of course throw in the License Keys, just to make it easier !)

Now it could well be that the Sales Force is 'tied into a mantra', or as promoters/marketers for the products, just aren't doing their jobs properly. They must feel inhibited by the rigid set of rules, and as marketers should be challenging the rigid rules for flexibility.

Can anybody think of a precedent for what is going on. 'Buy my product, but up front, I want a piece of the action, so here's a coupon book that you have to buy'. The only thing I can think of which comes close is the entertainment industry. Think, music (modern and even classical), movies on DVDs, book royalties. Certainly if radio/TV use music there are royalties - whether there is a package price paid up front, or from an audit the broadcasters pay after the event, I don't now. Movies, well we rent those through 'renters' so presumably they also might pay up front or even have to pay a royalty based on unit rentals. Now of course there's the added 'Pay as You View' - so the cable companies get into a royalty payment scheme as well. Books - used to be fairly straight forward, go to a retailer and buy a copy. Lovely idea - Google wanted to digitize books - but the book publishers have reacted unfavourably, although Microsoft apparently is trying to go ahead with a parallel scheme.

It's my guess that, per individual complaint, and most likely directed at management rather than the sales force, that they ARE bending the rules. Now as backup to the figures I was asking you for, only last night I wrote to four people in four countries, to see if they are prepared to give me dollar numbers applicable to their own situation.
Hopefully they will respond favourably - be interesting to see what numbers they come up with. 'No names, no pack-drill' - in anonymity we may be able to use those figures. So give it a few more days.

What if any figures did you get, even if they are incomplete, and which situation did they balk at - where were they reluctant to be specific.

Dammit ! If there is an injustice to us developers, let's get it resolved with compromise, for once and all. I said I had contacted four - I am now going to contact some more, additional countries on the Continent and I'll even stretch out to Asia.

It goes without saying that you just raising this topic here has already left a bad taste about Micro Focus with many. I absolutely LOVE the product - but if they continue without resolution, and somebody asks, 'Where can I get a compiler ?' - you can well imagine the responses they are likely to get.

Their awareness, don't kid yourself it's only Stephen Gennard, or 'Wiggy', (Simon Tobias) and Michael W. looking in and providing advice. (Michael W. ? I'm assuming he is California based - haven't a clue what he does. From the way he writes, I'm assuming he might be one of those people locked in a room to whom they throw the occasional bunch of bananas. Up to you Michael - exactly what is your role ;-) ). There are others looking in - I wouldn't mind betting Don Higgins, one of the CEO Tony Hill's lieutenants down in California.

So in terms of hoping to get anywhere with this - the following was at the back of my mind. Can't recall circumstances but once wrote to Don Higgins, having picked up his name from the Forum. As part of his reply he made the point that Tony Hill, and he himself as a 'converted' lieutenant, believed in an 'open door policy'. They picked this concept up from a paper written by somebody else - sorry don't have its reference - but it made for a good read.

I took them up on this a short while back and wrote directly to Tony Hill. My topic, absolutely nothing to do with Runtimes. It got tediously long because it was historical. I apologised in advance for it's length, quoting Churchill's preference for short/concise.

Didn't do any good in my case. Tony replied, "Interesting background. What do you want me to do ? Yes, and I like 'short'". "What do you want me to do ?", flummoxed me a bit. I was very slow on the uptake. I should have replied, "Pay me an annual stipend, and offer me a seat on your Board and THEN I will suggest what you could do". :-). But note he did reply and was courteous.

Regardless of what we find on figures from my other sources, if they oblige, I think we have a genuine beef. We have to test Tony's open door policy one more time, writing to him directly and see if we can get a compromise that leaves us developers in a comfort zone and they, M/F, are still making money, perhaps even more money.

(More money - I'm thinking of a situation where you produce a gizmo (Component) with a sale price of $50 marketed through the Internet, where conceivably you might sell 500 copies. But currently that is totally negated by their coupon-book approach. So at this point in time you just DON't produce that gizmo).

As to your subject title, "Is Micro Focus doomed ?". Not just yet, go to their site and check their financials for year ending April 2005. Long-term, like COBOL in general, they *might* be doomed. You can also pick up on a photo of Tony plus his background.

Keep your pecker up - let's see what figures I get back. Again, still would like to see yours, even if they are incomplete.

Jimmy, Calgary AB

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GENTLE READER - Completely skip this if you want - just background.

Postcript : My reference to sales people - How things have changed.

A team of three - Geoff - initially ran incoming Inventory control back at Guildford and when we went down to Yeovil, Somerset, became Accounts Receivable Manager (approximately 200 clerks). Howerd - local boy in Yeovil, Manager Van Sales Accounting - inventory control of the individual van sales (warehouses on wheels). Yours truly ex RAF in '61 and started coding vendor invoices to be punch-carded for a Power Samas tabulator. Moved with Unigate to Yeovil whee I became the Deputy Accountant - - my job, produce the internal month operating statements - Sales and Profit/Loss. Mid '63 - switched to systems analyst.

The only relevance to the above is that I'm trying to highlight why back in those days as computer people we didn't need to ask other bean-counters for advice. Between the three of us 'we had it covered'. Not so now, you MUST involve end-users in your project.

Back to the sales people. Absolutely green to computing our directive was 'Computerize Invoicing'; the Sales Ledger/Accounts Receivable would be Phase II - sometime...... Incredible FUN, we had to research, design and put together Product lists, how we were going to store customers' names and addresses etc. Of course the directive 'Computerize Invoicing', naturally implied a price look-up against the Product Catalogue.

Marketing foods - sales promotions. You discount your evaporated milk to beat Libbys or Carnation this week. Oops ! Next week it is Libbys that has a sales promotion, so in quick order Marketing dreams up another promotion. Anyway, that implies some flags set against specific products doesn't it. Then they also get innovative, let's offer this fortnight a discount on all our products which have the name "Farmer's Wife" on the label. A month later, let's have a promotion on products labeled 'Cow & Gate". With their blessing, (Green Giant), some three months later a promotion on "Green Giant" - back then we were their distributors as they were establishing their name in Europe.

Above you can see is getting a 'leetle' complicated, but not insurmountable, even with the old mainframe clunker we were using, and even though we were brand new to the game. (Machine was an ICT 1500, subsequently replaced by the ICL 1900 series. Richard is well acquainted with both).

So just to finish this pricing topic off, Geoff (as the ex-AR man), says "I wonder". So he gets his former cohorts to do a manual analysis of handwritten invoices coming in, either done by those van-salesmen, (driver and salesman) above, or the larger distribution depots clerical staff on behalf of their sales team. The analysis is done for one month. TWO THOUSAND variations from the standard published prices ! "Game over !", sez we. "No bloody way are we going to try and do price look-ups - it's unmanageable, and the net result from the ensuing ***-up - we three can expect to get a pink slip !".

Whether they were ever able to rationalize pricing to achieve price look-ups, I don't know. I left in '67, (exiting Trowbridge, Wiltshire, where the computer was based) - career move and more MONEY, back to my beloved Somerset to Debenhams (department store group) in the county town Taunton.

Whatever they particularly did then, (Unigate now no longer exists), or their successors, I don't need to tell you how fiercely competitive it is to-day, in the Americas or Europe, for a distributor to sell to supermarkets. The distributors have to be FLEXIBLE. Hello Micro Focus - "Flexibility ?".

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