RE: Off shore help desk?

[Konrad Underkofler <kdunderk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Well of course I have to comment...
MAPICS does have some fantastic support staff. I could list names and it
would a substantial one. Overall MAPICS support is better than most other
software companies but support is the weakest aspect of the software
industry.

But...
1) Companies are forced to get profitable to stay alive
2) New development costs money
3) Legacy software vendors are facing declining new revenues and
consolidation among their customers
4) Support costs money

Cutting back on support and development creates profits but causes customer
satisfaction problems and reduces the chance of future revenue enhancement
through new feature sales. 

Currently I would rate MAPICS support mediocre, compounded by the fact that
fix cds have been few and far between. Mostly the support is wildly
variable. The easy response they have resorted to is download some fixes and
see if the problem clears up, then close the call without any followup. My
position is paying for support that I should not have to prove to them that
they have a defect, they must prove to me that the code works as designed
and clarify the design or find the cause for the malfunction. With a ton of
old, poorly commented spaghetti code it is a daunting task. If you make
support so difficult to obtain users will stop calling, accept the
limitations and start looking for new ERP solutions. Very little is being
done in the way of testing and validation. Loss of the development staff has
weakened the support programming staff resulting in many more bad fixes than
they had before.

Offshore or not the support programmers, application programmers and support
staff should be together. Perhaps the application function support staff
should be separated, leaving the support programmers to do the defect
support?

Regards,

Konrad