General Consultant Discussion

Thankfully I don't run into this very much; however, I recently had two inquiries: 

1. A very small customer (not on agreement w/me) inquired about assistance exporting data to Intacct
2. A larger and more complex multi-company customer inquired about assistance exporting data to Netsuite

In both cases, they either wanted a price to export data or suggested that I join a regular weekly meeting to assist with exporting data. I politely declined both opportunities.

Which brings me to my questions: 

Do you have a formal policy on assisting customers with offboarding ( leaving ) Sage 100?

If so, do you have any requirements such as a period of notice ( ie 3 months, 6 months )

Do you have a set fee or specify that your agreement doesn't cover offboarding to another provider or platform? 

I very seldom have been asked to facilitate a transfer to a new consultant. However, I am increasingly seeing customers who think it might be my responsibility to export their data or facilitate their migration to another system.

So far, I've found two ways to deal with this

1. No thanks
2. It will be $x per month paid at the start of any month for which any services will be rendered ( this guards against the neverending migrations)

Have you found a better policy to put into place for these types of migrations? 

In the back of my mind, I think this is not even worth worrying about because most customers have already been meeting with a third-party for weeks or months by the time that I'm called. And I'm only called when they "hit a wall" and are hoping for some free advice. 

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Wayne Schulz
wayne@s-consult.com
Schulz Consulting
(860) 516-8990
Moodus, CT
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I love your monthly retainer option: they either get it and ensure the smoothest transition or they self-select out. Win-win! 

Now, we don't have your marketing presence and don't really get tire-kickers, but in our IT Service Provider days (much higher turnover), our philosophy was to 'exit gracefully and helpfully' since we always wanted our last impression to be a positive one, and this worked as we had quite a few boomerang clients come back humbled by the experience. However, on the ERP side, usually we're kicked out when the controller is replaced or the company is acquired and we don't experience any future requests (until the old controller returns). Or, when we're ROR'd, the new provider ensures the client doesn't contact us again :)

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Steve Iwanowski, NextStep Technology Advisors, aka DSD Lancaster PA ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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Subscription offerings are ideal in these situations.  Your option 2 above is perfect.  Offer them unlimited access at X dollars per month for as long as the transition requires.  Your goal is to help them transition as smoothly as possible.  Sell the outcome.  As Steve pointed out below, it is always good to leave the customer wishing you were the person taking care of them post-transition.

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Brian Kelly
Accounting Systems, Inc. (ASI)
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I also used the $x per month for a recent upgrade where the customer wanted a regular weekly check-in (a great idea for more extensive company upgrades ). 

One place where I recently was "burned" was a small company that asked to pay for my ongoing support monthly. They extensively used my services for various changes and updates to a semi-complex system. I mistakenly priced it as an Annual agreement / 12. Well, they front-loaded all their support requests, and in month ten, they called and said they didn't feel like they used my services enough, so they wanted to go hourly. I should have priced a pay monthly support agreement at a regular agreement times  1.5 or 2 ( or higher ). I always sense that new customers who ask to pay monthly secretly hope they will front-load questions and quit my plan midway. Now I price the monthly payments so they are about 200% of what annual would be and insist that I be paid in advance of each month ( otherwise, the customer tries to claim they asked one quick question and won't pay their partial last month).

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Wayne Schulz
wayne@s-consult.com
Schulz Consulting
(860) 516-8990
Moodus, CT
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Original Message:
Sent: 06-06-2023 09:57
From: Brian Kelly
Subject: Do you have an offboarding policy - and if so what is it?

Subscription offerings are ideal in these situations.  Your option 2 above is perfect.  Offer them unlimited access at X dollars per month for as long as the transition requires.  Your goal is to help them transition as smoothly as possible.  Sell the outcome.  As Steve pointed out below, it is always good to leave the customer wishing you were the person taking care of them post-transition.

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Brian Kelly
Accounting Systems, Inc. (ASI)
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