Comments on Andy's House O' Blog: I don't have a dog in this fight: Lotus Marketing

Great post Andy. Good to have an actual customers ...

2009-05-11T21:03:00.000-04:00

Great post Andy. Good to have an actual customers input. Your not alone, we have customers from 2 people all the way to really, really big ones.

The problem is the churn, both in IBM internal personnel and via BP mergers (a big BP eats a little BP and the customer gets pissed because the service now sucks). We come across literally 100's of companies that have never been touched by IBM or BP in years. In fact we've done a tidy business servicing these customers and extending their value.

But it is difficult to touch everyone, every "x" days/months/years but we are working with IBM to touch as many as we can.

It is also region based. The SE USA is a bit like the Silicon Valley for Lotus, with STS (my company), Jimmy over at Lotus911 and a few other players in Atlanta. Even with all of this coverage down here we have a hard time getting to everyone.

I will say to anyone interested reach out to me, lets see if we can't pull some strings in your area and start pushing some face time, either with a qualified BP, IBM or both.

We are here to help you and you guys are the most important part of the equation.

Hi Andy. Same boat as you and Duffbert. Just a ...

2009-05-11T16:14:00.000-04:00

Hi Andy.
Same boat as you and Duffbert. Just a plain old customer. Here, Notes is seen as a legacy app. Management seems to be waiting on the next new and hip thing to replace "my" Notes CRM apps. So far, nothing tops Notes Replication and offline work. But, we have Oracle Financial replacing our mainframe billing system and Oracle's CRM has been looked into. I'm trying hard to keep Notes here, but I am one small voice.

@Anonymous - This wasn't a post to say that the lo...

2009-05-11T15:58:00.000-04:00

@Anonymous - This wasn't a post to say that the local group hasn't recently been engaged with me to get out here. They have and will now that our big company wide migration project is out of the way. But in the past, there were times when I would hear from NO ONE. Lotus or business partner, looking to see what they can do to get their foot in the door here more then they have. Hearing all of these posts lately coming from BP's and IBM people just made me think that the lone admin or developer out there that feels left out of this conversation and see it from their perspective. It's clear that you know me, so please feel free to reach out to me personally and let me know what you tried and who you tried to talk to. I just see a YouTube channel and think that here, there are never going to take that seriously here.

Andy ... I am not sure what you mean by the above....

2009-05-11T15:44:00.000-04:00

Andy ... I am not sure what you mean by the above. Lotus has tried to reach out to your org several times to no avail. A rep can only call on a customer so many times when constantly getting ignored or told no.

Thanks guys for adding to this. Glad to know I'm n...

2009-05-11T14:01:00.000-04:00

Thanks guys for adding to this. Glad to know I'm not alone on this.

FWIW... I'm also the "customer" view here. I don...

2009-05-11T13:36:00.000-04:00

FWIW... I'm also the "customer" view here. I don't work for Lotus, and I don't work for a business partner. I work for a company that has used Lotus products for many years, and is now moving towards Microsoft solutions...

I'm in your camp. It's difficult from our end cha...

2009-05-11T10:43:00.000-04:00

I'm in your camp. It's difficult from our end championing one vendor vs. another. I wish Lotus was being pushed down from management but it's not. It's not my problem. I'm at the point where I work on what the man wants me to work on.