This is story about a girl we'll call" Doris" who worked for 10 years to build a company based in honor, integrity and fairness and then has it gutted by a company we'll call, "Nuisance",whose driving motivation seems to be avarice and power.
Doris worked in the voice recognition software business, as a reseller of the Nuisance software for healthcare providers and as a trainer and systems integrator. One day in September of 2010 she was contacted along with the other 150 or so resellers of Nuisance software and asked to attend a Nuisance Webinar.
She thought, " Wow, that's pretty good, after 10 years of working with a company that has been less than inviting on any level, they invited me to attend a webinar."
So she made sure to attend. During the webinar they announced that the Nuisance Corporation would officially stop openly competing with it's resellers by no longer offering the medical software for sale directly through their website, something which they always claimed they didn't do even though their website reflected the contrary. Again she thought,"Wow, that's not in keeping with their usual tactics...perhaps they have reformed and realized that their resellers are, for the most part, the people who have built the Nuisance business and now they will finally reward us."
She thought, "Some of us have been working with it longer than Nuisance has even owned it" She thought, " isn't that lovely, finally some recognition..." Within a few seconds though her illusions were shattered when Nuisance announced that in exchange for that concession(????) they would no longer, "allow" their resellers to sell to hospitals or to physician practices which had more than 25 doctors in them. Nuisance was asking all of us to give over all of our contacts within the hospitals so that the "inside sales team could take it from here."
Doris almost fell over from shock!!!! She had recently gotten the break she'd worked 14 years for, the requests from her client hospitals to bid for the priviledge of installing the software throughout their institutions. A total of about 3 million dollars, in the aggregate, and now she was supposed to just walk away.....Is that right? Is that ethical? Is this what has become of the work ethic???? You work for years of your life and then somebody just throws you under the bus???
She had been working for 14 years to build her client base and to instill trust and confidence in her work. It had expanded, via word of mouth, to include 200 clients. Most of her clients were providers who worked in 3 hospitals which she had been cultivating for all of that time in hopes of one day getting those contracts to voice enable all of the providers within each of the three hospitals. She prided herself in responding almost immediately to any call for support of service. She tried to keep her prices reasonable and her service impeccable. She provided 24/7 /365 tech support for each of her users. It was hectic sometimes but well worth the reputation she had built for excellent service and support.
With the mandate of President Obama that "all providers need to be using Electronic Health Records Systems" by 2015 her business was about to pay off... explode.!!!!!
But instead it was to be gutted by the Nuisance Corporation???? She couldn't believe her ears, they further said that ALL resellers would have to sign an agreement stating that they would no longer sell to hospitals or practices of more than 25 users, if they wished to continue to be able to purchase the software from them.
Doris thought about the many times the company had already tried to leave their VAR's out in the cold and how many times they had tried to take accounts right out from under her. She couldn't believe that now after all these years, when all of that work was about to really payoff, they stepped in and casually announced that, "the in house sales team would be working directly with our clients now."
They would effectively put Doris out of business. She couldn't believe that any entity could be so blinded by avarice that they couldn't see the lives, the friendships, the trust they would destroy on the first day of October when the VAR's would no longer be allowed to do business with their own customers.
She thought perhaps she could power on somehow working without her current clients and trying to find a way to rebuild her company from the few remaining clients... She thought, " When life deals you lemons, make lemonade... but how??" Well maybe Nuisance can provide the ice water, after all that seems to be what is coursing through their veins.
What would you do??? Tune in next time to see if Doris gets her oats....
Sunday, October 24, 2010
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)