openerp-community team mailing list archive

[Raphael Valyi <rvalyi@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, May 16, 2014 at 1:47 PM, Marcelo Bello <marcelo.bello@xxxxxxxxx>wrote:

> Hummm I just watched a video that was presented to partners in the US and
> they say we will pay for all apps installed and not apps used. In my eyes
> it doesn't make any sense.
>
>     Also, this thing that partners will not get any commission on
> contracts with more than two years is REALLY nonsense. It essentially means
> that the contract will become 50% more expensive on the 3rd year because
> the partner will need that revenue back and of course it will be important
> for the client to keep bonds with the partner. It is really sad when
> companies pull this sort of crap on their "partners".
>
>     I speak from the point of view of a client, just to clarify.
>
> Best regards,
>
> Marcelo
>


Hello Marcelo,

It's much worse than that: as an OpenERP partner/integrator, you should
always maintain your customers and this represent some work.
Say 3 hours per months for a medium customer (like you may be) and may be 7
days per years if you follow
migrations with the Enterprise. But this can can change a lot. For instance
the biggest case we implemented in Brazil, a Wolkswagen supplier of 500
employees with 130 daily users, OpenERP only had
the required added value because we developed around 40 customization
modules for them (on 6.1).
That is migrating from 6.1 to 7.0, even with the Enterprise, is still 40
days of absolutely expert work to migrate these custom modules and their
data without which OpenERP wouldn't make the cut.


You Marcelo, have already been a victim of the "partners" that have been
dropped on the battle field overnight and I once told you there have been
situations much worse, with attempts
to get new companies trained overnight ranked higher than the experienced
smaller companies who just trained them...


Now, partner ranking is only taking into account the "amount of NEW
Enterprise contracts sold". That is you can expect to see new totally
unexperienced guys dropped on the spot in exchange of money.
(oh yeah may be they won't pass the certification later on, but n any case
the rotation of fresh meet is going to make new victims like you have been
once.)

in the meantime, serious partners will be confronted to the following
dilemma:
1) keep supporting their customer base, but that means dedicating some
expert resources to them that don't count in the partner ranking...
That mean they will be the once who invested the most to get OpenERP
working from
the early days, but won't see the return of their efforts...
2) or instead dump their customers to bill new Enterprise contracts and
don't get their own investment raped...


One would think, may be a shouldn't be talking about these things in public
here.
But you know, 2 weeks ago, very experienced German partner, CTP, Openbig
has been degraded from Silver back to Ready partner
despite making overall 20k euros target, because that wasn't "new
business", that was the first time we have seen the concrete the
application of these policies...
I mean fuck it ya know, in Brazil you got 2 companies they have been
dropped as Silver last year just because they booked a few training seats.
They didn't meet their
targets not even a single year, and most probably they will leave OpenERP
too. I mean, if a company like Openbig with 5 years of very hardwork
experience forwarding 20k euros per years to OpenERP SA
is ranked less than naive companies like these doing early spendings just
because they were unaware they would never afford the challenge of being
sustainable OpenERP integrators,
then this all becomes a big farce that should be absolutely be known.
So Then I exchanged several emails with Fabrice Henrion, director of
OpenERP in the Americas, in private explaining how we where shocked by
these policies and how we were hesitating
for the Enterprise renewal of our own customers after these things...
So I mean I'm only bring this here in the public, because all other
"diplomatic ways" have been exhausted at this point you see...

By writing this you know, I'm even ready to get the consequences like
Akretion being discarded from Gold partnership, but you know at this stage,
things should be put on the table
because this is reaching a point where in any case there is no way to hide
these issues further. We won't make 40k NEW Enterprise no. We also used to
make 1/3rd of the target
with the CTP trainings in Brazil. But you now that this is all
certification driven, nobody wants to pay 5 days of training without
localization (and may be buy later a dedicated training
if it will even meet enough participants to happen, something unlikely here
in Brazil today given the low critical mass of the market), so that
business training has been in bad shape too anyway...


Regards.

-- 
Raphaël Valyi
Founder and consultant
http://twitter.com/rvalyi <http://twitter.com/#!/rvalyi>
+55 21 3942-2434
www.akretion.com

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