RE: Why should I be worried about the merger? NOT

["Spitzer, Judd L" <judd -dot- l -dot- spitzer -at- lmco -dot- com>]

Bill et al.,
I don't know about your company, but I am aware that the cost of
software is much more than $100 upgrade.  We take software licensing
extremely seriously.  In our case, that would be $100 per seat, and when
they see a corporate giant coming, it seems the price goes up rather
than down.  For instance, if we want to upgrade to Acrobat 7.0, which we
won't do for many reasons, but cost is one of them, we would have to
have seats in my office alone for over 70 people.  That's $7000.  On an
enterprise scale, those costs can be extremely difficult to digest.
That's why we find that we pick and chose those with the "Most" need and
provide them with the software.

Of course, many Tech Writers don't have the luxury of determining the
software that will be used by the corporation, however, if your company
is planning an IT upgrade, that would be the time to be involved in
those negotiations.  If you bring solutions to problems, people tend to
at least listen up.

BTW, I do believe that software companies for the most part do listen to
their customer base.  Especially when the product is specific to an
industry.  While TECHWR-L tends to have articles that are how-to
oriented, something that could start right here to leverage our
"Legitimate Authority" is providing hard hitting software reviews.  They
could be archived at TECHWR-L, and catagorized appropriately.  Being
able to share your experience and views of the software is a big deal.  

Cheers,

Judd

============================================

> I have to agree with Judd on this. It's time that we stop accepting 
> what is thrown at us and start asserting our demands. Companies like 
> Adobe respond only to market forces (whether real or perceived), and 
> we are a market force if we act collectively. If TWs make their 
> demands known, as a group, Adobe will respond.

I don't believe it'll ever happen. We're very small fish in the very big
Adobe pond.

> As you can see, if Adobe does not provide the information that I, as a

> customer, need to plan my future, I intend to cease ALL business with 
> them, because every product they sell has competitors. I will also use

> whatever influence I have to get others to do the same.

This is the nature of competition. They already know this. I would
expect a response to the tune of "OK, Bye."

> Now I admit that one letter won't do a thing to change Adobe's mind, 
> even when talking the number of dollars involved here. However, if 
> Adobe were to start receiving hundreds, or even thousands of such 
> itemized letters, we would have their undivided attention. Even if my 
> case does yield a somewhat high figure, some quick math reveals that 
> even a thousand letters times half this dollar amount equals 
> $3,577,500. Remember, Adobe is not Microsoft, they do not have 
> unlimited financial resources. The fact that they are buying MM shows 
> that they know that they are in trouble. A large volume of letters 
> like this would just serve to remind them of that fact.

OK, question time. Will your employers OK the move away from a $100
upgrade to a new purchase and the overhead involved in migrating content
to the new tools?

> As Judd said, we can accept what the market throws at us, or we can 
> attempt to steer the market toward our needs. WE have the power to 
> force accountability and change, but we must make our voices heard!

Like all those previously successful technical writing tools
petitions... ;-)




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