On 5/10/2014 5:37 AM, Ted Roche wrote:
On 05/09/2014 05:49 PM, Jeff Johnson wrote:
I have a customer that uses a cloud application that I am converting
to my application. When we requested they export the data they said
a) they were not able to give me file structures (I'm okay with this,
though) and b) it would cost development time for them to build an
export.
I asked them, who owns the data and they said the customer.
Should a customer have to pay to get their data if they want to switch
applications? It is not in any agreement that they agreed to pay for
this.
What do you think about that?
I think it's a really good question. You say, "It is not in any
agreement that they agreed to pay for this." and I'd respond that it was
not a feature they were promised.
The service provider contracted with your customer to provide their
services: input, data manipulation, reporting. It's not necessarily in
their business interests, looked at narrowly, to provide an easy way for
people to take their data and leave. In the larger view of being a good
provider, such facilities make sense. When I worked at BugCentral.com
with Harold Chattaway, a full export was a feature we pointed out to the
customers, to assure them that they were not locked in, and that was a
feature we got positive feedback on: clients could keep their own
backups, and download their data and integrate it in with their own
systems.
Similarly, I use a number of different web sites for tracking my
(feeble) athletic attempts, and all of them have import/export
facilities, and all of them are lacking in one aspect or another: limits
of data, fields excluded, only export or only import, etc. This seems to
be an under-appreciated, under-developed feature. As I typically am a
no-cost user of these systems, it's hard to feel I have anything to
complain about.
I think your customer is going to need to:
1. Pay the service provider for the export.
2. Pay you or someone else to screen-scrape the old system.
3. Hire someone to re-key all of the data.
If I were them, I'd get quotes for all three of the options, and use the
estimates of #2 and #3 to try to negotiate down the estimated cost of
#1, and then choose the cheapest/fastest/optimal choice.
So you, like me, provided an export for your customers. You and others
in here seem to think the software company is only looking out for their
own best interests. That's okay. The problem is customers unwittingly
putting themselves in this position in the first place. I have seen an
independent insurance broker lose his entire book of business because he
could not retrieve it. The company didn't even have anyone that could
do it. They would have to bring in an outside programmer. A lot of
this book was Medicare information. Another customer was a funeral
home. All of the case data is unavailable unless they pay and the
company is not sure they can export imaging (documents).
My advice to customers is if you value your data then look into these
things before you go with an application. Also, like you said, some
export limited data (ACT notes are incomplete) and when you get it, you
may still need some help using it.
Thanks for the discussion.
--
Jeff
Jeff Johnson
[email protected]
SanDC, Inc.
623-582-0323
Fax 623-869-0675
http://www.san-dc.com
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