RE: SpinsterHi Dan,
RE:
"Do any have experience of running a software house, do many even know they are a sofwtare house as opposed to a travel company?"
I was talking about the BOD, not you or other posters. Absolutely not a trick question, the thread had your name on it when I hit reply, and I was in part picking up on sometheing you had said. For the record, find many of your posts enlightening and a breath of fresh air.
Youi allso said
"The thing is with software in any niche market the real question is: "is the demand there and is our produt meeting it?""
I don't disagree, but it's only half of the story, and in SCS's case, the least problematical. They have never had problem finding customers and signing deals. Lack of credible financials is a obvious millstone, I lost a bet with jet and said they would never sell a TT/SB until they were profitable (via LL+RTBE or SRM), I am impressed that SCS have got 5 customers live on TT/SB.
However the other half, what you didn't say is a problem. "Has the company got the software they sold to deliver?." SCS's history on failed, delayed and missed deliviries is unfortunatley the big achillies heal. Go back to 1999 onwards and follow the story of Project blackbird, Livelynx, Airtek, Livelynx plus, Livelynx Plus realtime booking engine. The last attempt (realtime booking engine) was what project blackbird was meant to be, due for release Q4 1999. RTBE finally arrived 2003, but STILL wasn't an RTBE!! Many of us invested on the strength of the business model, but they never ever delivered. Rick saw this and bypassed development of an RTBE, and cut a deal with openfares who to have a very good one. This signalled the end of S/W development in vancouver and the old Solarnet, and the focus on TT and Markham.
The service bureau model was another smart move, particualrly as we now had a hybrid system cocnsisting of TT and Openfares bolted together. But also very financially attractive to customers.
I was basically saying that we seem to be suffer serious sofwtare delays again, I appreciate this how much work is involved in launching a new product (though Tourtek got is first live company back in the 90's). I also know that two Oracle programmers doing implemenations, testing, debugging, coding, training, and 1st / 2nd line support is seriously under resourced. Aqquiring developers etc in a company thousands of miles has obviously not worked, becuase they don't have the time or resource to train them and to manage development etc from two disparate groups.
My question was, given their history, does this BOD see that and see that we need to address this issue in Markham before we are able to support all of these resellers we have signed up, our own (Tech7), Openfares, and LLX?
We have great links through Rick with Sabre, Last year Sabre started reselling a competing product from a company in Fonzerelli land. Probably becuase we were simply not ready.
I sense this is a stitch in time job, we save money by not taking on more suitable people, but lose it in cash burn as delays keep us running below profitability for months and months longer.
I beleive we need a cash injection soon, focussed tightly onto getting Markam up to strength, product finished, Tech7, Openfares and LLX, trained to be able to sell TT/SB to theirs existing and new customers, and get into profitability quickly so we don't scare away more customers with our financials.
As of today, potential customers is not too much of an issue, there are 40 - 80 lined up in tech7 and openfares existing customers. At current staffing levels, that is more than we can support, never mind implement.
You will find NR's on the deals with LLX, Openfares and Tech7. One of Ricks updates spoke of having 20 of Tech7's 40 customers converted to T/SB by end of Q1 this year. I won the bet saying that wouldn't happen and they wouldn't have the 6 live by xmas, I know what implementation alone involves never mind a new product untested in live environment.
Idle