Re: Is ERP dead? -- MIDRANGE-L

How do you define quality or customer service in a bid process? It can be
done, in the same way you sell an AS/400 solution over NT/Oracle/whatever.
If asked to bid a project or whole system, if I don't see the questions
asked that makes the AS/400 look good, I try to educate the requestor of the
bid on the missing parts. (You can't always do this). IBM has a series of
points in their training to sell e-commerce framework solutions and
comparing to other vendors. ie Scalable, Secure, Reliable, and so on (I
forgot the rest of the list). I suggest those "tests" to recognize the
quality of IBM's solutions.  Anyone in an e-bid process needs to do this.
IMHO the e-bid companies are just hustling a process to collect a
commission. But it's a two way street, and we are free to attack (modify)
the bid process. There will be some big disasters (just like ERP). The funny
thing is, I try and describe an e-bid process to one of my customers, and
they can't fathom  their customer's would put them through the process. Like
a deer in the headlights. They want to "look" at the web next year...
</rant>
Jim Franz
----- Original Message -----
From: <MacWheel99@aol.com>
To: <MIDRANGE-L@midrange.com>
Sent: Wednesday, May 31, 2000 4:01 PM
Subject: Re: Is ERP dead?


> franz400@triad.rr.com writes:
>
> >  the sad part is that many winners of this bidding
> >  may not be established in the line of business,
> >  and may not fully understand the business.
> >  The e-bid companies managing the bidding certainly don't.
> >  One size fits all !! How do you define "Customer Service" in a bid?
> >
> >  Jim Franz
>
> My employer lost out in a bidding today to some outfit whose bid was below
> the cost of the materials to make the product ... our bid includes cost of
> materials, cost of assembly, budget for quality assurance ... our
management
> believes that some companies do not have a good enough ERP & internal
> controls to know what their costs really are.  Obviously the customer of
the
> bidding war is the loser in this, since they will get either shoddy
results
> or a lost vendor & have to do it all over again.
>
> We are in a business in which the final product is mission critical for
human
> lives.
> Think planes falling from the sky because of shoddy ingredients, or
medical
> technology failing when there is no quick & easy backup for the human
lives
> it is protecting.  Traditional business has guaranteed quality ...
anything
> that does not measure up - we stand behind it & fix it at our cost, but
this
> also goes back to our vendors ... a customer returns a part that was
> defective - we analyse & determine the problem was in component from one
of
> our vendors - which have to foot the bill for repair costs by us & by our
> customer.
>
> Where do you define that in the bidding process?
>
> Do we now start manufacturing sub-standard products so we can compete in
the
> e-bid process?
>
> No, our sales department needs to communicate to our customers who are at
> risk of using e-bidding, what the negatives are.
>
> Al Macintyre  ���
> http://www.cen-elec.com MIS Manager Programmer & Computer Janitor
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