The never ending project implementation

Here I am, the middle of January, still working on a new software implementation.  This started in February of last year and was supposed to be done by November.  The problem has been the fact that the company that we got the software from has been dragging their feet because we are one of the first to implement their new software.  Any time there is a problem it takes them weeks to figure out how to fix it.

Recently I was working on writing SQL reports in SQL Server Reporting Services and I asked if there was anyone at the company that knew the primary keys between two database tables so I could link them together.  I was told no one there knows anything about writing the reports so I should contact Microsoft to get the answer.  I could pay the company to write the reports, but no one would help us even get started.  It took 3 weeks for us to get all of the services implemented properly on a workstation because this company would not give us any documentation on how to do it.  Then we were told we could use SQL server 2005 instead of SQL server 2000, which turned out to be false.

A word  of advice…  Only be a guinea pig for new software and technology if you trust that company to know what they are doing.

Project Management

So the company I work for is in the 8th month of their 6 month project.  We still will not be going live until January.  The good thing is that the reason for the delay is not my part of the project.  Believe it or not, the delay is the company that sold us the product.  We were promised by the vendor that the product would work a certain way, and surprise surprise it doesn’t.

VENDORS LIE!!!

So whenever we find a problem with the product, a manage engine must be done.  And their solution to the manage engine is, “a billable solution”.  So now we are getting billed to get the product to work the way it was originally supposed to.  I think that is a problem.  Why should we pay more because we want the product to work the way we were told it was going to?

After every “solution” they send us a survey to fill out.  They have gotten so bad that the highest up people are starting to notice all of the problems that we have been having with the implementation.   Everyday more problems are found answers are not.

Any suggestions?

The dangers of one company hosted solutions

The company that I work for has been slowly going to one company to get all of their software from. They also keep all of our data on their servers. Some people may think that this is a good idea, which don’t get me wrong, it can be, but in my case, it is bad. The main company that we use is to be classified. They are a good company, but they seem to buy any financial company that makes good software and make it their own. The problem is that they do not throughly investigate the product and make sure that their support team or developers fully understand the product.

I have had a ticket open for over a month now. I have to generate a security file and then export it when I am done to save the changes to their web server. The problem is that whenever the file is generated, it always checks the box that allows users to override the global settings. This is bad!!!! I was given a solution last week, but then today, I was told that the solution I was given was incorrect. So in the 1.5 months I have been using their software, I have gotten 4 different procedures.

Another problem is that I create reports using the guidelines, but the reports I am given, the developers DO NOT. I get asked why didn’t I follow the guidelines. I got so sick of them not being able to figure their own products out that the last time I asked their manager why doesn’t their company follow their own guidelines. I have been at my work for 1.5 months. In that time I have had 10 open tickets, and only 3 have been closed successfully. My company thought that going all out with this company would be good so we won’t have to deal with multiple companies (also we become the guinea pigs for all new software, which means we pay less for it all) but this is going horribly. Not a single piece of software works the way it was designed!!!

By the way, I am still in a process of moving old reports from a old drive to a new one. It has been over 2 weeks. It was supposed to take 3 hours, but a year ago when we started to use their software, our old data was imported incorrectly which is causing a huge headache for me and the IT team.

Does anyone else only go with one company for all of their systems and software and not have a lot of problems?

Does not posting a warning on a website make me a Communist?

Today at my job, I got one of the strangest e-mails I have every seen. The company I work for and myself, was compared to Communist China. The person stated that due to a recent upgrade in our software, QuickBooks was no longer working on their computer. It is true that we had a recent upgrade on Sunday, but e-mails were sent out to the clients about this upgrade and the error that occurred, which was quickly taken care of the next day. The next e-mail from the same person stated that even with the upgrade, Quickbooks was giving a different error, but was still not working properly. The client then went on to state “Your company is like the Communist Chinese government, never admitting that there are problems and just sweep them under the rug, never taking responsibility for our mistakes.”

The client was under the impression that since they were the only one to have this problem that it is our fault, and we should post it on our website. I must admit, that maybe we should have edited our website to state more clearly the possible side effects of the upgrade, but not say that one person cannot use QuickBooks properly and warn all to stay away from us…

In addition, this client then goes on to state that whenever they hit tab to indent a paragraph on our site, when sending and e-mail, and then they hit enter that is always cuts them off and sends the e-mail. This happens because when they are hitting tab is is moving the selection from the text field to the button that is “Submit” so when enter is then hit, it automatically sends the message.

So my question is: What do you think our responsibility is when we use software from a different company and they do not fully test their upgrades before putting them into place? Should we warn everyone and scare them away from our product or just post that we have an up and coming upgrade and not make a special note for a single user’s problem that is not because of the system on our end?

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