Even if you don’t plan a huge call center in India, most software needs updating. Most software needs to offer some technical support. Think about whether your product will need either or both and then think about the best way to offer them in a way that keeps your product profitable.
We know a database company that built its database platform in Corel Paradox in about 1990.Paradox is a very old-school system that you may not even have heard of, but it does what it does well. The key to this product is the data, which is updated regularly on a subscription model, not the interface, which has been updated twice in 15 years and may never be updated again. As long as it works, the clients in this case don’t care.
In this case, Corel licensing (for the runtime version every buyer of this database needs) is dirt cheap. Paradox is rock solid and pretty much always works, even if its feature set is very old and clunky under the skin.
So this company is in fact selling information, not a “software product” though it is sold and licensed as both.With more than 200 customers their support staff is a single person who handles phone and email inquiries but is also updating the data continually. The software support costs, by leveraging a solid, unfashionable, database system that only works on DOS/Windows machines are kept exceedingly low.
These particular answers may not work for you, but whatever your market, customer base, and product requirements might be, think about these issues:• Will the software do forever what it does now, or does it address a changing need?
• If the need changes, does it change yearly, every five years, or some other timeframe?
• How easy is it for a reasonable average computer user to install and use the software?
© Copyright 2006 by Michael Rasmussen and Jason Tarasi - All Rights Reserved.
• Thoroughly test and debug your software
• Distribute an early aka “beta” version to some real users and get their feedback for the final release (buttons that make sense to you and your programmer might not make sense to them)
• Use a good installer program that does everything automatically – XP and Mac users now expect “smart” installation, and this is not a corner we recommend cutting
• State what your support policy is and stick with it – if its email only with a 24 hour response, say so, and everyone will be happy!