Maintenance is ALL
If you need to have a mantra you repeat each day when you are working: it’s “maintenance is all“. It’s not only true for software and IT department but also true for many kinds of businesses.
We come back to the IT field or Marketing field i know better to focus on my purpose: the success of any technical operation is in the maintenance aspect.
Yes, it’s less sexy than the initial call of proposal with nice figure and stupid excel sheet which shows exactly what you want to see.
You can buy a Ferrari but you are not able to pay for the garage behind at the first stop, what is the reason to buy a Ferrari?
Tell me…impress the boss, impress the employees, impress your colleagues?
Then it’s exactly the same thing for a piece of software. You can afford to buy some, some of them are looking like a Ferrari but in reality, is only poor old car coming to you garage :
Ok let’s come back with more serious consideration.
Maintenance bad forecasted will only kill you and kill your business.
If you are big companies like some nearby Vevey (hummm) you can spend a lot of money and close your e-commerce website after throwing millions by the windows. Ok nice. The director is promotedt to the HQ.
Ok…when someone is answering your call of the proposal, this someone gives you back a paper where there is bottom line with the initial cost of the project and after a basic fee for maintenance.
By experience, and trust me i have seen a lot of failure in IT – I think IT is like a spacial journey, a lot are failing, the cost for maintenance is always underestimated.
The first question you need to answer is the complexity of the solution itself.
When you are speaking about Magento with e-commerce, you are sure that you will spend more time in shitty problems with no revenue behind than if you choose a basic Woocommerce.
Then with 50 articles to sell, don’t pick Magento, you don’t need it
The only “problems” is that a normal agency won’t advice you to pick WordPress (Woocommerce) because they know they won’t make money with you because Maintenance will be low.
Do you begin to understand?
Your initial 80’000 USD project will become an 800’000 USD project soon…if you pick the solution with the heaviest maintenance charge.
Then if you have to pick among 3 solutions at 80’000 USD, 200’000 USD or 300’000 USD for the initial package, even the 300’000 USD could be better than the initial choice at 80’000 USD with a final cost at 800’000 USD-
The Short-term viewer always lose in any business.
To make this choice you need people enough smart to go deep in the solution you are choosing and able to understand what are the traps behind.
We speak again about the ownership of your business, you can’t delegate it and people involved in your IT circle needs to have the necessary knowledge to make good research for the solutions a front of them.
The majority of the times, they will hide behind the brand.
We take SAP because it’s SAP
We take Amazon Web Service because it’s Amazon Web Service
We take Microsoft because it’s Microsoft.
Ok. i love marketing but IT men are the most tender target for Marketing teams : as often the people who have a surestimated view of themsleves are the first to be trapped and we know that a GOOD REP is just a killing machine for any IT department.
Then what you need to do before to jump ?
Don’t beleive in your agency, first
Don’t beleive in your IT internal team,two
Just take a third advice with enough experience to help you to solve this problem, call me at +41 78 682 78 74 or by email at pierre.jean.duvivier@thirdbrain.ch or use the booking system just after this post….
I will be happy to assist you in such dilemna.