Chris, I spent 13 years with what is now a Fortune 100 company before doing my own thing. When I joined them, they weren't even in the Fortune 1000. Many of the systems were added-on and upgraded over time, similar to your situation.
It came to a point where the business case had to be made to modify the entire internal application infrastructure to something that would integrate and scale to the size that this company had become. Even a rough estimate of man hours should give you a strong business case for the following: 1) Annualized hours required to maintain or add features to the existing application vs. the same required to do the same on a "from scratch" application. 2) If the end goal is to re-distribute or re-sell the application or services, annualized hours required to support customers with the current app versus your proposal. 3) Annualized hardware scaling costs, assuming a reasonable growth rate. For example, if the current application is highly inefficient in the way it consumes resources on the app server and DBMS side, it's going to require more hardware resources per client - i.e. - less profitability per client. 4) Net value of the software application as a fixed asset. By developing something internally with a higher degree of scalability and greater ease in adding features/enhancments, the value of the companies assets increases. They can depreciate the R&D costs and grow their net worth because the software is more valuable to clients and potential investors. This one's more difficult to calculate, but many business people don't factor in the value of their internal software assets. My former company now places a high value their internal projects and intellectual property as assets and has an entirely separate business and service model for marketing those assets to third parties. All in all, if you are dealing with those who made the original decisions, congratulate them on their success and reassure them that the decisions they made previously were the best they could be at the time. This proposal is a product of their success - NOT a failure on their part - even if you personally see it that way. The above can help make the pill easier to swallow and help you influence those who, as Dave said in his response, have a vested interest in the decisions which were made prior to your involvement in the project. HTH, Jon On Apr 24, 2007, at 7:53 AM, Peterson, Chris wrote: > I would like some advice on how to approach a client regarding changes > to their system. Before they were my customer, they purchased a > software package that could do X. Then they spent years having a > company develop it into Y, with many different methodologies and > extremely bad database practices (when you have to join on a LIKE > '%blah%' just to associate 2 things that obviously MUST be associated, > and you have one column for each category an item is in, the > database is > bad). They bolted on an accounting package that does not tie payments > to items, so tracking is a mess and allocation of payments to items is > impossible. Here is the problem: the customer wants to have a > product > they can re-sell or host for other companies. I need to tell them, > in a > way that makes sense to business people (which I am not), that > trying to > build more software on a shaky base is folly, and will cost them far > more in the long run. I don't want them to have to pay for > modifications > to this code, and then when it comes time to try and re-sell it, > have to > re-code from scratch because they have no rights to re-sell their base > package or derivative works! > > Any angle to take, or insight into conversations you have had, > would be > appreciated. I don't want to tell the customer 'your current package > you spent years on isn't very good', but I don't want them to hold > on to > it either! Ugh. > > Chris > > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Create Web Applications With ColdFusion MX7 & Flex 2. Build powerful, scalable RIAs. Free Trial http://www.adobe.com/products/coldfusion/flex2/?sdid=RVJS Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/CF-Talk/message.cfm/messageid:276137 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/CF-Talk/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=11502.10531.4
