RPMS - Software for Reps

Whence Microsoft?

2010-06-22T10:08:00.000-07:00

Two years ago I wrote about purchasing my daughter a Linux-based laptop, and what it might mean for the future of Microsoft:

When Microsoft's new, rewritten operating system appears in five years or more, they will find a vastly different audience than exists even today. It will be very, very interesting to see whether they can move the market one more time.

Today I ran across an article that I think you should read:

http://www.businessinsider.com/microsofts-business-could-collapse-2010-6

This spring I purchased a powerful new desktop computer, with Windows 7 (64 bit) and I'm very pleased with it to date. But I'm a programmer.

My daughter brought that Linux netbook out to visit in Colorado, and she hooked right up to our wireless network, managed her E-Mail, posted some college work, and probably made a number of Facebook updates.

There will certainly be a place for desktop computers in the future. But as developers, there is no way to ignore the appeal of that little Linux notebook. Mind you, disconnected from the Internet her machine has limited appeal. But actually, my own desktop has the same problem.

Oh, I can code without an Internet connection, and can write in Word, or update an Excel spreadsheet. I can even write E-Mails, or blog articles, and save them to post when I am connected. But truthfully, without an Internet connection, I feel cut off.

I bet I'm not alone. So if we've all made that jump - where a fast Internet connection is just something that we HAVE to have, all the time - then I postulate that we are FAR more willing to consider Internet-based software than we were a few years ago. Where the software resides makes little or no difference to us. Performance, price, and suitability to task become the only measuring sticks.

I think that Microsoft will have some staying power in small and large offices. You will find Windows boxes in rep firms for many years to come. But if an application vendor ten years from now tells you that the best way to run their app locally is on a Chrome machine, that won't be nearly the issue that say Windows vs. Mac is today.

You will have employees that run Chrome computers. And you'll have a few Windows computers in your shop too. And of course, you'll have at least one sales rep that clings stubbornly to her Mac. And you will rightfully expect that your software providers be able to work with any or all of them.

As an application provider, writing multiple versions of a software solution for several operating systems is not terribly efficient. The obvious refuge is a web server, or cloud-based system that shields the developer from the vagaries of any particular local OS.

When the day comes that you can buy a Dell computer with Chrome or Linux for far less money than one with a Windows operating system, software companies without some sort of Internet-based solution will be swimming upstream.

RPMS Version 8

2010-05-13T11:35:00.000-07:00

The initial copies of RPMS Version 8 will begin shipping this month.

In Stage I, as I've described in various newsletters and E-Mails, we will replace the reliable but elderly Btrieve 6.15 with Pervasive PSL V10. It also represents our first Software as a Service (SaaS) offering.

It is an awesome upgrade.

We will ship the new version out slowly at first, to single-user installations, and then gradually increase the pace as we become more comfortable supporting the conversion process.

The conversion process does require that you have applied RPMS Version 7.9.10 or greater, available as of September 2009. If you're not up to that version, you'll have to go to the most recent V7 first, then apply the V8 upgrade.

Conversions are always interesting, and can be somewhat painful. We've gone through three major file system conversions over the years.

In 2005 we did a massive conversion for former RK Systems users to RPMS
In 2001 we moved our entire installation base from RPMS Versions 5 and 6 to RPMS Version 7
In 1988 we moved from Realia Cobol indexed files to Btrieve files as we migrated from RPMS Version 1 to Version 2.

We did many file utilities, fix-ups, patches, and file or index additions during those times to the database. For the most part those were fairly painless.

The other major version changes to RPMS generally left the underlying file structures in place - it was just a matter of replacing a dated interface or adding new capabilities or systems. Here's the history of our major updates, as best I can remember and/or piece together:

RPMS Version 1 - First shipped in 1984 for PC DOS and MS DOS versions 2 or higher. This system had a black and white full screen character driven menu interface. It was largely based on what our service bureau operators used with their Singer mini computer.

RPMS Version 2 - 1987 - We added order management and orange color boundaries to the black screens because now we could reference VGA! I guess we liked Halloween or something.

RPMS Version 3 - This was our conversion to Btrieve sometime in 1988, and represented our first multi-user capable system. It was the worst and most painful conversion ever, according to the technicians, but by golly, two users could be in the system at the same time. The war with Unix for the PC desktop turned in favor of DOS.

RPMS Version 4 - Sometime in late 1989 or early 1990 we changed to a single file handling system. It was a big deal because it gave us more room internally to do some things within the 640K limit that DOS imposed. I remember that we could print in more places than before, because we had the memory to call the programs.

RPMS Version 5 - In 1992 we went to blue screens with drop down menus, completely replacing the old menu number interface with a more modern DOS look. I hand-designed all the forms on 80x25 character block paper. Sheets and sheets of it. We made users learn where the ALT key was. The drop down menus had drop-shadows. It was 3D. Sort of. But they looked pretty cool for DOS.

RPMS Version 6 - This was our first Windows version that shipped in 1996, and required Windows 95. We wrote it with Visual Realia, a now defunct variant of Basic, because it played nicely with Realia Cobol. Unfortunately, VR was owned by Computer Associates. They didn't play nicely with anyone.

RPMS Version 7 - First shipped in 2001, this was a ground-up rewrite with an all new interface and all new database. It took a long time, but was worth it - very stable and very easy to support.

RPMS Version 8 - Shipping now for single users, and in the weeks ahead for all users.

Sorry for the trip down memory lane, but I'd been meaning to write it down somewhere anyway, and the occasion of Version 8 seemed as good a reason as any.

Getting What You Pay For

2010-03-24T14:23:00.000-07:00

As you might expect, I have several computers for which I am responsible. Counting all of them at our company, my personal machine, my wife's computer and our children's machines, I think there are seventeen total.

One that I have is a Pentium computer that I purchased through a reseller from Dash, a local computer distributor here in Kansas City, back in late 2000. It is still running flawlessly. Even so, given it's advanced age, older software and operating system, and relative lack of giddy-up, I've reduced its workload to doing one thing only - it writes and compiles VB6 code for updates to the soon-to-be-replaced RPMS Version 7.

In fact, I'm pretty sure that machine is the second oldest computer in our domain. The oldest is a 486 that runs an ancient Novell 3.12 network to which we can still connect. We changed over to a Microsoft server back in 2003, but kept the Novell machine running "just in case." I keep thinking that I will take it down and junk it, but now it has become sort of a longevity test. It just sits in the closet with it's monochrome monitor switched off, patiently waiting for the Microsoft server to die. I'm pretty sure that Novell box is from Dash too, and dates back to 1993 or 1994.

I HAD another computer at the office that I used for E-Mail, documents, accounting, and .NET development. But I now have to replace that four-year-old Dell XPS that ran Windows XP. The motherboard went south back in January, and it cost me $75 with my local computer tech to figure that out. That was better than a bad hard drive I guess, but getting a new board is hardly worth the time and trouble, and might necessitate a reformat of my drive anyway. So bottom line, I'm in the market for another computer.

(I've temporarily replaced the XPS with a Dell Vista laptop that our bookkeeper no longer uses. It's fine, but VERY slow to boot and shut down, which Vista seems to want it to do for updates about weekly.)

I'm not a computer reseller, so I can't go to Dash directly, but I would really like to go back to them one way or another for my new Windows 7 computer. Read this article, especially if you're one of our many electronic components reps:

http://www.dashdist.com/1u2u/company/capacitor.html

Who knew? I used to get computers from resellers that went through Dash all the time, back in the eighties and nineties. But then I stopped. I suppose it was just a dollars and cents thing, because the PC had seemed to become a commodity, with one more or less the same as another. I thought the battle was really about the best software or network.

And now I've re-discovered that the computer really does matter. It's just that it will take you a couple of years to figure that out.

Protectionism and the Balance of Trade

2010-03-12T10:10:00.000-08:00

I read a new post by Pat Buchanon titled The Disemboweling of America. As is his wont, Mr. Buchanon rails against free trade, cementing his position in some circles as our chief xenophobe. Let me summarize:

Nations seem to rise to power while protecting their industry - Great Britain, the US, Stalin's Russia, postwar Japan, and China today
Nations appear to decline in power as they embrace free trade - see the above list, and consider Great Britain, and the state of the US economy since NAFTA

I've always been a free trade guy. But I also always thought that the Balance of Trade said a lot more about our nation's relative fiscal strength than the trade deficit. Service businesses like mine don't count when we tabulate the so-called 'trade deficit'. Even though we sell a little software and support to Canada, Mexico, and a few other countries, we're not included in that trade measurement.

And that is true for innumerable US businesses. If you work for a company that provides engineering services internationally; or you educate foreign students in our country (or run an American school overseas); or provide sales representation or distribution for a Chinese manufacturer, you don't count.

I've always been mildly irritated by that. When pundits decry the trade deficit to make some political point or another, I always wonder why they don't look at the Balance of Trade. Shouldn't what any of us sell internationally count?

So because of Buchanon's article, I thought I'd have a look at it. I found the Bureau of Economic Analysis site, and downloaded a couple of their spreadsheets.

In 2009 we exported a shade over a trillion dollars worth of goods (that's a thousand billion, by the way) and imported just over 1.5 trillion or so. That's about on par with what Buchanon said it would be - a 500 billion dollar trade deficit.

I figured that we'd more or less make it up in services. I figured wrong. In services, yes, we exported half a trillion. But we imported better than 370 billion. And that made our Current BOT deficit 380 billion for 2009!

How in the world (literally) did we import more than 370 billion dollars of services? Like this:

72.6 billion of travel
25.5 billion of passenger fares
54.2 billion of other transportation
24.5 billion of royalties and license fees
153.8 billion of other private services
35.8 billion of direct defense expenditures
4.7 billion of government miscellaneous services

The one that sticks out like a sore thumb is Other Private Services. You know what those services are, even if you didn't know that's what they were called. Here's a sample of Other Private Services:

Help desk with Indian accent: - "Thank you for calling technical support, my name is Maverick, how may I assist you today?"

Me: "Well, hello there Maverick, what's your last name?"

Help desk: "I don't know, they haven't given it to me yet."

I really wanted to ask him how Ice Man was doing, but I bit my witty tongue. And there's more to private services of course, but the international outsourcing of tech support, computer programming, engineering, telecom, radiology, and plenty of other services, aided by the the Internet, has put my old stand-by Balance of Trade argument out to pasture. The Balance of Trade now sucks too, and it has for a while.

Our imports of foreign services overall have increased 210 percent in the last 17 years. But the segment called Other Private Services has by itself increased over 500% in that same time! It is by far the fastest growing segment of our services imports, and it means one major thing:

Jobs.

When we travel to foreign countries, we give piecemeal financial support to other nations. And I've always thought that's fine. It's neat to travel, and it's great that international tourists come here too. And if I buy some software from a German company that is the best suited for what we want to do, and that helps my American product work better in Italy - well, that's the upside for my customers of me paying a license fee to a foreign company.

But should we out-source our programming and technical support jobs because it is cheaper?

Henry Ford understood that the employees of his company would and should also be his best customers. And further, those employees would then have the means to purchase any number of product created in the American Industrial age.

I don't think that we should force companies to 'hire American.' But I would sure like to see us do two things to quit killing ourselves in the Balance of Trade for these Other Private Services.

First, eliminate federal and state minimum wage laws. Those laws are job killers, plain and simple. We would shrink the labor pool so fast and put more Americans to work with that one measure than virtually any other thing we could do.
Second, require employers that import labor via Other Private Services to pay employer social security and medicare tax on those purchases. The employer tax is essentially a government tariff on our domestic labor pool. If we don't have the political will to get rid of it, at least impose it on internationals that want to work over here via the Internet and telephone. I know that isn't a very 'free trade' idea - but it has more political potential than asking our government to eliminate that tax.

Otherwise, if all of us in this digital age purchase our Other Private Services from overseas, instead of hiring local workers, what exactly will America become?

New Ideas for January 2010

2009-12-11T08:31:00.001-08:00

We're going to pop in another quick update in January. We've had some nice new ideas that we're going to incorporate.

Multi-value snapshots will now export to a single Excel worksheet, or multiple sheets with formulas - your choice.
Sales reps names will be loaded onto the lists for the customer list and, if not split among multiple reps, the commission reconciliation list
The reorganization of the sales history file (RPYTDSA) will automatically delete history transaction records for years that have no values. This should reduce the number of zero value entities reported on summary, history, and snapshot reports.

We've had a lot of good feedback on the Imap system. The number one request has been to add product and/or point of sale to the system. We'll try to squeeze that one in for January also.

Excuse the Mess

2009-10-01T12:17:00.000-07:00

Sorry for the trouble with the blog. I deleted an old gmail address, not knowing that to do so would irrevocably delete my older blog sites.

Ouch. Fortunately (or not, depending on whether you like to read what I write) the sites and the various blogs were indexed by google, among others, so I have been able to re-capture the content, and will re-post it over time.

My old blog site for business, RPMSLLC.blogspot.com, is now therefore in some sort of limbo, so I can't use it right now. But even that has a silver lining, as due to some corporate re-structuring the company name RPMS LLC is no longer how we're known. Nowadays Uncle Sam, Kansas, and our bank knows us as RepSoft LLC. Thus, the new domain for the blog.

Short lesson - be careful when you delete your @gmail E-Mail addresses. You only think you know what you're doing.

Speedy SSD Raid

2009-04-23T16:50:00.000-07:00

Now this is fast (and kind of fun, too.)

It has been a long, long time since I put together my own computer. Probably 1998 or '99. BUT it did last up until last year. *

· That is, all except the 3.5" floppy drive, which did not survive a toddler attack with a paper clip that happened in 2002. I managed a few years without it.

Watching this video makes me want to put a machine together again, pretty much just like this one. Since disk reads and writes have ALWAYS been the long pole in the tent for business applications like RPMS, this gives me really interesting ideas.

Solid state drives - SSD's - are basically just the flash memory cards we're all familiar with now from digital cameras and the like, arrayed on a computer card. And RAID is an acronym for Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks. So you take the array of flash chips bundled into a single drive (the SSD), and then take a bunch of those SSD's and wire them together on a single computer (the RAID) and presto, pretty darn fast computer.

I've never put together a RAID before, but hmmmm.....

Google Chrome

2009-03-05T14:44:00.000-08:00

Google Chrome seems better to me than FireFox.

I really hate to say it, as I've been a FireFox user for a while now. But Google Chrome is FAST, and I've set it to be my default browser for now. It is still technically beta, so if it fouls up in any substantial way, I'll post and let you know... but it sure looks good today.

I wrote a little Windows application for purely personal purposes that takes both a date and location parameter, then shells to the default browser with an Open statement to display a schedule page.

(Basically, instead of going through typing a really massive URL or five levels of mouse click / display page, I get to the immediate result that I want with three clicks. Sometimes it IS handy to be a geek.)

Results: FireFox - 3 seconds. Google Chrome - less than 1 second.

That's the only rigorous test that I've done to this point, but everything seems faster. And there are several other small touches that I really like.

First, the tabs, URL bar, button bar and so forth are minimalist and reasonably intuitive. (See the picture.)

Second, the default home page is kind of cool. It displays all the sites I've been too recently or mostly, and lets me just click them to get back. (See the picture too.)

The pre seeking in the URL is really fast. And Chrome inherited all my FireFox settings perfectly.

Here's another review from CIO magazine. You can download the latest Google Chrome right here.

Sweet Charity

2009-02-26T09:50:00.000-08:00

Ok. I'm sorry. You would think one quasi-political post in a month's time would do it, and I'd get back to software and ordinary geek-stuff. But I'm going to gently rant.

The White House Director of OMB (Office of Management & Budget), Peter Orszag, had this to say about the pending reduction to the charitable donation tax write off in the new budget:

But let’s look at how the tax code treats two different contributors to a non-profit. If you’re a teacher making $50,000 a year and decide to donate $1,000 to the Red Cross or United Way, you enjoy a tax break of $150. If you are Warren Buffet or Bill Gates and you make that same donation, you get a $350 deduction – more than twice the break as the teacher.

This proposal walks that difference back some of the way – it would limit the tax benefit for Buffet or Gates to $280. In other words, we are not eliminating the deduction – just reducing it to 28 percent (or $280 on the hypothetical $1,000 contribution) for the 5 percent of families at the very top of the income distribution. That is the same tax benefit that they would have enjoyed at the end of the Reagan Administration.

Obviously this was not written for Gates or Buffet, or even Americans of lesser wealth who are nevertheless big givers with high incomes. They ALL understand what's going on, because they live it at tax time every year. No, this is written specifically for that 50K per year teacher. Or anyone else making less than 250K per year. And here's the kicker - Orszag thinks that we're all idiots.

But, don't take my word for it, read the whole post. Here it is again:The Budget and Charitable Donations

Did you see one word in it about how much more in taxes those big givers already pay?

I know lots of you are already way ahead of me here, but let me spell it out, just because it will make me feel better. If Gates gives $1,000 to the United Way, and Joe Teacher gives $1,000 to the United Way, both Bill and Joe are $1,000 poorer, and the United Way is $2,000 richer.

There's nothing uneven about that.

UNLESS, you are Orszag, and you believe that the money - the $1,000 in either man's pocket - is rightfully YOUR money first. YOU are the government, and YOU have first call on ANYBODY'S money. In that light, his post makes perfect sense. Since all money REALLY belongs to the government, not the people that earn it, the government is free to take as much or little as they want from anybody, any time, at the point of a gun.

Now while as a G man, Orszag knows this is true, he can't SAY it in so many words. It still sounds a little too harsh, too police state, too politically incorrect. He doesn't want to screw up the opportunity for his boss to be re-elected. So he says the word 'tax break' and pretends that it has the same value as real money.

But it doesn't, does it? Remember, each man is $1,000 poorer, and the United Way is $2,000 better off.

But Jim, you may protest, I know there must be something too this. He can't be lying, can he?

No, he's not lying. But he is relying on the fact that you're an idiot. He hopes like hell that you believe this crap about "walking the difference back" because it sounds like he's making it more equitable, making everything the same.

I've got an idea. In the interest of fairness, here's another way we could make it the same. Let's reduce the top tax rate to 15% for Mr. Gates. That way, he would only enjoy a tax break of $150 too, the same as the teacher.

Don't hold your breath.

Despite my rant about this, they'll probably get away with this. And here's where it is really going to hurt charities. Say it's not Gates, but a $450,000 per year family of six, with two kids in college, that gives 10% annually to Joe's charity.

Bush Tax Rates & Charitable Deductions:

· $450,000 income

· ( $45,000) charity

· ($113,325) tax burden

Net for the family after charity and tax burden: $ 291,675

Obama Tax Rates & Charitable Deductions:

· $450,000 income

· ( $45,000) charity

· ($120,721) tax burden

Net for the family after charity and tax burden: $ 284,279

So how does our hypothetical family get back their $7,000? By reducing their charitable giving, of course. If they give only $35,000 to charity, then the numbers work out this way:

Obama Plan after reaction to policy

· $450,000 income

· ( $35,000) charity

· ($123,521) tax burden

Net for the family after charity and tax burden: $ 291,479.

Roughly the same as it was under Bush. So Mr. Orszag is happy, since he gets 10K more for pork funding. The family doesn't feel great about things, but at least they can still pay for tuition (no financial aid for them) and their mortgage (glad somebody can.)

Who's the big loser here? Joe Teacher. Because he thought that things were going to even out. What really happened is that charity that he likes - the one he gives his very hard-earned money to - they can't do as much as they used to do. So ironically, they ask for more from Joe.

My Political / Economic Crystal Ball

2008-12-01T09:49:00.000-08:00

As a small business owner, I have to admit to a little schadenfreude as I watch the stock market dive. High-powered executives and financial geniuses must watch in helpless consternation as all the value built purely on expectation evaporates into the economic ether.

As a homeowner, I'm really glad that I don't have to sell my house right now, so some of you that have put off moving into a larger home can enjoy a little schadenfreude at my expense.

But as an American, it's not really my nature to be down for long. My crytsal ball tells me...

Plan on cost-cutting and continued attempts to increase business efficiencies through 2010. The world will turn again in 2011, beginning a modest but lengthy recovery, the heights of which will be tempered by a ballooning U.S. deficit and nagging tax rates. Taxes and spending will be reined in after the 2010 elections. Madam Pelosi will be deposed by the Democrats in an effort to stop the bleeding, as the House Democratic majority will be cut to the bone. Republicans will run the Senate outright, retaining 17 of the 19 Republican-held seats up for election, and winning 11 of the 17 Democrat-held seats, for a net gain of 9 Republicans, putting them at 50.

So all rep firms should be approaching 2011 with excitement and anticipation. The trick is of course, to survive until then.

The business buzzword nowadays is deleverage - shedding debt - and hardly anyone can do it fast enough. As a rep firm, you have the awesome advantage of being a pay as you go expense. Press that advantage.

Double the money that you spend marketing to potential principals. This year and next the dissatisfaction with both current representation and fixed cost direct sales reps will be very high. Fill that void, and work to carry slightly more lines. Resign one line for each two that you add.

Be the single most positive and optimistic voice that your current principals hear. Don't be Polly-Annish - tell the truth - but do so with optimism for the future and genuine excitement about the opportunities ahead.

Be sure that you're being paid what you ought to be paid. Be sure that you're getting sales information from your principals. If they are unwilling to share that information with you, something is wrong.

In your own operations, be as intelligent as you can be about your overhead. The RPMS E-Data Wizard can get you more information in less time - if you're not uploading data electronically, you should be.

Fill every working minute of your time, and the time of your employees. If the phone isn't ringing, find something else to do that improves your business. Every employee must participate in that process. Those that don't must be fired.

Push your sales reps. Have a frank conversation with them about their activity reports. You know, I know, and they know that they're not responsible individually for the state of your industry, or the capital of your customers. But what you can't know - what you can't ever really know - is whether you're getting their best efforts. Your ability to measure their efforts in ways other than dollars may mean the difference between keeping and losing the lines that keep your business afloat. There are fantastic tools out there for measuring activities and opportunities, including our favorite, TeleNotes.

Ask your vendors for discounts. You may not always get them, but you can almost always get better terms. Every single vendor you have, including your phone company, Internet provider, insurance company, landlord - yes, even your software company - are worried about whether or not you will be around to pay your next bill, or renwew your next contract. Work that to your advantage. Reduce your costs right now in exchange for extended contracts.

Help your principals undertstand that this is how the world works now, and is likely to be for the next year or two. Be creative. Demonstrate to both customers and principals that you are the indespensible cog in the wheel of their relationships.

RPMS Version 7.9 in 2009, and Beyond

2008-11-11T09:44:00.000-08:00

In 2009 our company will hit a couple of milestones worth mentioning.

Our very first PC based software system was delivered in 1985. So in September of 2009 we will begin our twenty-fifth year of support and updates to rep software for manufacturers reps.

2009 will also see the final updates and enhancements to RPMS Version 7, in preparation for 2010 and the new RPMS Version 8.

When we re-wrote RPMS from the ground up back in 2000 and 2001, the idea was to create a version that was both easier to use and easier to support. Mission accomplished. RPMS V7 is the most popular version of RPMS ever, but even better, takes far less support per installation than any previous version. V7 has continued to change and improve over the last several years - you can look back at a history of those changes here.

And there are still some enhancements we want to make in 7.9 this year to finish off this version of our system. Some of our plans include...

· Adding a ship-date oriented line item report, much like the open order reports but regarding shipped items

· Making improvements to the Inventory system, including allocation verification and better status change management from stocked to non-stocked; and kit/assembly management

· Adding the ability to print a range of purchase orders by date range, principal, customer, sales rep, or combinations

· Adding the opportunity to 'auto-add' products during short form data entry, for products that are not found

· Completing the TeleNotes to RPMS interface

...and likely other ideas that come up as well.

As in other times with other major version changes, we will have a dual-development schedule. Work will continue on enhancements and improvements to V7, while work begins in earnest upon RPMS V8.

And what, you may well ask, does Version 8 have in store? Plenty, of course, necessitating the major version change, including...

· File and record handling changes that will provide major speed improvements for reports, snapshots, and data entry

· Architectural changes to databases that will greatly improve product (part number) versatility

· A major system-level change that will provide two incredible new advantages:

o Automatic off-site backup and database auditing, for daily guarantee of database reliability and integrity, on RPMS-hosted servers

o Simple, powerful, secure remote access for field sales reps, including reports, customers, order entry and more, from RPMS-hosted servers

· A license management change that automatically configures your system for optimum usage. If you don't use a feature, you won't pay for that feature.

...and probably more that will become apparent as the new software takes shape.

Will V8 look different? For remote accessing field sales reps, yes. For the rest of us, not much. We should all be very comfortable with the look and feel on the first day.

Is it Internet-based? No, not completely. More like Internet-enhanced. While there are some things that are done best on a web-based product, the day to day management of a rep system is not necessarily one of them. Rep software operators want speed, reliability, ease-of-use, and suitability to task. Where the software operates is not nearly as important to them as how it operates.

Is it priced differently? We're not sure. But we do expect that our 2010 pricing will not create any heavy financial burden on customers that stay under our maintenance program from year to year.

Is it licensed differently? Yes, it has to be. Once we cross into the world of hosting - even in the narrowly limited way that we will first do so - we will recognize new and on-going commitments that will have to be passed along.

So in 2010, we dip our toe into the software as a service water. Much like our migration from DOS to Windows back in the late 1980's, RPMS will support multiple styles of system for a while. The desktop-based client-server RPMS V8 will continue to provide outstanding speed and ease of use for day-to-day operation, in a familiar and practical environment. The V8 database, regularly backed up to and audited by RPMS servers, will provide a stable, secure off-site backup. And the new code we write to run on our servers for your authorized remote users will provide a simple, powerful way for field-sales reps and remote offices to access their corporate data.

This 'best of all worlds' approach has served us well in the past, and is, we believe, our best means to move forward to new models of software delivery. Until then though, RPMS Versions 7.8 and 7.9 will continue to set the standard for rep software. We're looking forward to this next journey in software development, and hope that you are too.

Accounting for Maintenance Subscriptions

2008-07-01T12:05:00.000-07:00

Accounting is dry subject matter. Sorry in advance to bore you, but given the current financial climate, I thought it might be timely for you to learn a little more about how we handle the money that you send us.

For most of the history of our company, we did our accounting on a cash basis. [You probably already know this, but if it's been a while since business school, cash basis means that we counted our revenue when we received it, and we counted our expenses when we wrote checks. No sooner, no later, for either one.]

Cash basis accounting is the way that most small businesses function. It is simple, perfectly legal, and easy to implement. Most rep firms we encounter run on a cash basis. But for a company that relies to a large degree on subscription revenue, it is not a very smart way to operate.

Here's why.

As a software company, we annually ask our customers to purchase support and update contracts. Our version of this contract is calledEMA - the RPMS Extended Maintenance Agreement. Near the end of each customer's subscription period, we send them an invoice, and invite them to renew their maintenance subscriptions. Most customers do, and for that, we're always grateful.

But up until about 2003, we looked at the subscription money our customers sent as immediate income, because we operated on that cash basis. That tended to create some awkward circumstances.

For example, when a customer's subscription expired in December 2000, and their 2001 subscription renewal check arrived before year-end, we'd be compelled to count the money as 2000 income. But all the expenses we incurred on behalf of that customer would happen in 2001.

Speaking of 2001 - though I hate to - I hope your business in 2001 was better than ours. Ours pretty much stunk. We'd historically borrowed money during August and September, and that year we had to borrow even more than usual. We managed to turn a profit, but barely. And Brent and I really did not like the feeling of scraping around for short-term funding, when we knew that our business was generally pretty sound.

It seemed to us that if there were some way we could count the subscription income in the month we earned it, as opposed to when we'd received it, our cash reserves would get a whole lot healthier. So in late 2003, we changed our accounting method to an accrual basis, and our business model changed completely.

[Quick accounting refresher: In accrual basis accounting, revenue is recognized only when it is both realized AND earned. 'Realized' means when the cash comes in, but revenue is not 'earned' until products or services are provided. Expenses are recognized in the period in which related revenue is recognized. ]

So what happens nowadays to your EMA subscription money when you send it to us? Well, it goes in the bank, obviously. But as it passes through our accounting system (QuickBooks Pro, if you care) it gets placed in one of twelve different liability accounts, each based on the last month of the subscription. So if your EMA expires in September, your money gets written to liability account number 2409, called "EMA through September".

At the beginning of each month, we make a general journal entry, taking a different percentage of the remaining liability from each month and posting it as EMA Income. For example, at the beginning of November we will take 100% of the remaining liability from the 2411-November account. And we'll take 50% of the balance of the 2412-December account, the rest to come out the next month. And 33% of the 2401-January account, 25% of the 2402-February, etc.

Each subsequent month the percentages shift, such that ALL the remaining EMA is cleared out of the current month's liability account, half from the next month, and so on. It is not really as difficult as I'm afraid I've made it sound. A little spreadsheet cheat-sheet shows the month and the percentages to write as income.

But here's the really useful thing. We have cash when we need it. More importantly, we have money when you need us. We haven't robbed Peter to pay Paul. We don't worry about funding our obligation to provide you with support and programming updates. You've already funded it, and we won't take the difference for ourselves until we've earned it.

A little boring, I know. Not very edgy, this conservative accounting stuff. But since we're asking you for money now and then, we thought you might like to know.

Redmond Rewrite Time?

2008-05-19T09:24:00.000-07:00

I think that Microsoft - Microsoft no less - is going to rewrite.

In her blog All About Microsoft, Mary-Jo Foley writes about "Midori", the code name for a new microkernel-based operating system, itself the offshoot of a project called "Singularity". Singularity is the Microsoft project that studies what a future, non-Windows based operating system might look like.

Microsoft notes that the Singularity project is strictly research-oriented, with no plans for commercialization. But Foley speculates that Midori might someday find the light of day, based on the level of talent and resources Microsoft is applying to the project.

What struck me the most about her article was the mission statement excerpt she quoted from the Singularity team, itself lifted from here. I've copied some of it below, with my emphasis added:

· “The Singularity project started in 2003 to re-examine the design decisions and increasingly obvious shortcomings of existing systems and software stacks. These shortcomings include: widespread security vulnerabilities; unexpected interactions among applications; failures caused by errant extensions, plug-ins, and drivers, and a perceived lack of robustness. We believe thatmany of these problems are attributable to systems that have not evolved far beyond the computer architectures and programming languages of the 1960’s and 1970’s. The computing environment of that period was very different from today…."

The bold type above reminded me greatly of something that I wrote in the forward of our RPMS Version 7 User's Guide, back in December of 2001.

· "Without a major rewrite of our software, we found that could not focus on our core purpose. Our growth was limited by support issues, our sales were limited by packaging and pricing issues, and our creativity was limited by a file structure designed for the 1980s."

I was trying to describe our decision to completely change the RPMS software from the architecture that served for Versions 1 through 6 to the new design in Version 7. I don't know that I fully captured it, but it seemed in those days that every single thing we tried to add to Version 6 was next to impossible.

Over and over, some new challenge we encountered had to do with inherent system design problems. Software designs that had been strengths for the mini-based service business and more strictly limited DOS operating systems became impediments. Memory and disk space were no longer dear, and there was no longer any reason to treat them as such at the expense of usability.

This growing frustration with the then current version of RPMS led to a meeting of the minds that took place in August of 1999. Murray Nolte, a long-time programmer for RPMS, Steve Goold, our most senior technical support specialist, and I all sat down together to make a list. In crass and probably typical form, I titled the list 10 Things that Suck About RPMS. After the meeting was over, I re-titled the list 15 Things that Suck About RPMS. (Looking back through the archives, I see that some politically correct marketing-type person has subsequently revised it and added sales-specific problems to it, so that in early 2000 it was re-titled 20 Difficult Issues with the RPMS Software Product. Which is what I meant of course, but nobody else has a sense of humor.)

Anyway, it was pretty clear to me that we needed to rewrite our product. And you really never, never want to do that. See this advice, then look at this advice, and if you're still not convinced that a rewrite is a bad idea, consider this. Bottom line - nobody recommends the rewrite pathway very much.

All that being said, all the money we spent, and all the pain we (and our customers!) went through, I guess I'd have to say that I'd do it again. Just better.

Because all through 1999 and 2000 we were selling so many rep software systems that it seemed as though the sky was the limit. Then along came January 2001, and it was, as Brent famously said, "like somebody turned out the light". The rep industry was simply battered by recession, imports, the Internet, 9/11 and more. In our view, it has never recovered in terms of number of agencies. Reps overall probably still do the volume they did in the twentieth century, or in many cases more - they're just paid less, and there are fewer rep firms.

The V7 rewrite turned out to be critical for us, because today we support a still very large installed base with a very small company. That never could have happened with the previous generation of software architecture. We would have died.

Which leads me back to Microsoft, and the cause of this post. I think they're going to rewrite. Microsoft today is still the fattest of cats - marketing and sales are pretty fine. But the tech types there are not indifferent to all the things that suck about Microsoft operating systems. They want to be the coolest. They want the kids to like them better than Apple. They want the IT types to like them better than Linux. I bet they have a really long list of Difficult Issues.

So when they rewrite this time, it will be an enormously different product that comes out. And if they have the guts to release it and to push it, everybody that wants to sell for this Microsoft OS will have to rewrite their software, or at the very least hope that their cross-platform application is what it claims.

Yesterday I bought my daughter a Linux operating system laptop (about $300 from Amazon) to take to college this fall. She'll use it (I hope) for taking notes in class, E-Mail, and wireless Internet. She's taking her Mac desktop to use in the dorm. When Microsoft's new, rewritten operating system appears in five years or more, they will find a vastly different audience than exists even today. It will be very, very interesting to see whether they can move the market one more time.

Acer Monitor

2008-03-15T21:26:00.000-07:00

I found a deal on a 24 inch Acer monitor two years and four months ago. Back in December of 2005, a monitor that size would set you back over $1,000. But I found a great buy at my local MicroCenterfor $799, before a $100 rebate.

Two years later, when the price for the same monitor was down to about $499 net, I bought a second one for home. Nowadays Samsung makes a 24 inch that you can pick up for $429 or less.

The great thing about a monitor like this is the number of windows you can see at once. For example, as I write this, I'm watching the Royals and Red Sox in my Slingbox window. At higher resolutions I can get work done in three or four different windows, if it helps - and sometimes it does, especially when debugging, or looking at two data files and a code window at once.

The not so great thing about a screen like this is spoilage. As in, now, I am spoiled. And early this month when my monitor at the office turned on for just one second, then stubbornly refused to re-display, I was very out of sorts. I have two computers there that share the monitor, so I first had to determine if my KVM switch was ok - it was - and then confirm that the monitor wouldn't display on any other computer - it would not.

So at that point I figured that my piddling one year warranty was well expired, and since I nearly never buy the extended warranties, I would now be in need of a new monitor. But just on the off chance that the warranty was better than I imagined, I looked on-line atAcer.com. I was mildly surprised to see that the 2008 version of my monitor carried a three year warranty. So then I went searching for the receipt, found it, and discovered that verily, my monitor was only a toddler - not quite three years old even.

That never happens. My stuff always breaks just after the warranty expires, never just before. I was almost giddy, under the circumstances, as I picked up the monitor, trotted it down to my car and thence over to MicroCenter, receipt in hand, where finally things ran more true to form. Microcenter doesn't handle warranty claims for Acer.

Oh.

I acted disgruntled, as though I would never shop there again, and the sales clerk acted sorry, like she was really, really sorry. We were both acting. Nevertheless, I carried on and carried my twenty-pound monitor back to my car, drove it back to my office, and used the standby seventeen inch monitor to look up Acer tech support.

The first thing I had to do was register my product. Evidently that had slipped my mind in December of ought-five. Acer wanted to know my purchase date and serial number. I dutifully supplied them, andvoila, I was qualified and warranted via E-Mail. On fixmyacer.com, I described my problem in great detail ("My monitor won't turn on") and promised to ship it to them. They promised to send it back, but not in the original box. I'm not sure why they go to great lengths to explain that you will not receive your monitor back in its original box, but I was not especially attached to that box, lovely cardboard though it was.

On May 6th UPS collected my boxed monitor at their local terminal, and for $29 promised to ship it ground to Round Rock, Texas. Acer received my monitor on May 9th, which is pretty solid speed by UPS ground. A gentleman named Ruiz signed for my monitor at the Acer repair center in Texas.

The following Monday, May 12th, I put in an inquiry to Acer Tech support, to get a status report. There was no phone number to call, nor could I find one on-line. However, an E-Mail was returned to me that evening, informing me that not only had my monitor been fixed, but it had also been shipped back out to me on May 9th. A quick check of the FedEx tracking number revealed that my monitor had begun the journey back to me at 1:07 p.m. the very day they had received it in Round Rock.

Wow again. Way to go Ruiz. And everybody else at Acer.

On the 13th FedEx delivered my monitor back to me, complete with a note about what Acer had fixed (I'm not sure what an inverter is, but now I have a new one) and that the repair was warranted for another 90 days, or the balance of my original warranty, whichever was greater.

So I was back in business, the monitor working good as new, and Acer with high marks from me for following through on their warranty, great turn-around speed and a still a really good product.