The customer doesn't care, or even know, what kind of equipment is used as long as the product is correct and timely delivered within budget.
You seem to be missing the fact that "within budget" is a two way street that the customer and the business owner must drive down in opposite directions. The customer doesn't care that you just signed a million dollar contract on state of the art, grade a, top notch equipment and software. $X is his budget, and if you can't deliver within his budget he shops elsewhere. The client doesn't care that next month, or next quarter, you have another $10,000 lease/payment to make on that equipment.
Let me put it this way. I've spent much time trying to get old, out of date hardware/software to work on new technology. Sometimes it never will work, sometimes it's best to junk it and get new stuff. Unless you want to spend many months building your own software/drivers there is no guarantee that old hardware/software will work ever work on that new Pentium 4 you just bought.
And yes the customer does care what equipment you are using. Set up a Commodore 64 as your only computer in the office and see how fast customers run out the doors.
If you can't afford the technology then maybe YOU SHOULD FIND ANOTHER BUSINESS TO GO INTO.
It would be like opening a business building houses and then since you can't afford saws and stuff like that you use a swiss army knife.
If you can't afford a certain amount of basic tools then get a job in another industry.
If you can be serious, maybe you'll begin to make sense.
Now you're being stupid.
That may be true. But there are still folks out there who actually use paper and pencil, and crank out quality work for a multitude of customers. And there are folks out there will trillions of dollars in hardware and software that turn out crap.
What seems to be your point.
Yet there are hundreds of thousands of home builders who have to rent equipment (OH MY GWAD!!! IT'S USED AT THAT!!) to get the job done. Amazingly - the customer doesn't give a shit that the contractor doesn't actually own every piece of state-of-the-art equipment they may ever need in their lifetime. All they care about is if the job can get done in a competent manner and within the time and budget constraints of the client.
Remember, the client doesn't care about your budget problems.
All the tools necessary should already have been obtained (and hopefully maintained) in the skills and knowledge of the individual.
The rest is just helpful crap to have and (as you have graciously noted) a liability to maintain and upgrade. There is a valid option into buying used, leasing it, borrowing it (ever heard of office sharing?) or whatever has to be done that fits into your budgetary constriants.
Quite frankly you are acting like you are the equipment sales rep and you are desperate for the commission on the sale of some equipment the guy may not really be in a position to afford.
Besides, this is a home office (if you forgot) and he'll probalby never - ever- meet the client there. Unless your next breath is to opine that he has to buy a 10,000 sf mansion so the client is impressed with the digs.
CompuServe was GREAT for sole practitioners. Dick Parsons should turn it into a database portal that charges "per use". When I went on my own, the minute I saw some CD-ROM database in some library or some on-line database I would email them and within a week or two they would find a similar one to hook up. In 1988 I read about advances in NSFnet and emailed them to hookup their email to a local university and they linked up as saqqara.cis.ohio-state.edu, and I got back on the net after a five year absence. Bibliographic databases for science engineering and business are way too expensive unless you can get a per-use billing. You have to realise how spoiled I was before that: they'd bring interloaned books to my mailtray a few days after I sent the internal library a note.
- = - Vasos-Peter John Panagiotopoulos II, Columbia'81+, Bio$trategist BachMozart ReaganQuayle EvrytanoKastorian
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---{Nothing herein constitutes advice. Everything fully disclaimed.}---[Urb sprawl confounds terror] [Remorse begets zeal] [Windows is for Bimbos] [Homeland Security means private firearms not lazy obstructive guards]
In by snipped-for-privacy@privacy.net on Sun, 05 Mar 2006 10:53:20 -0600 we perused:
*+-But the dang software costs and licensing is where the
*+-expenses is at
Admittedly, a lot of AutoCAD work gets submitted as PDFs anyway.
Indeed. In med/lab fields the software isn't even compatible.
So you have all this wasted potential converting things by hand.
I used to sit next to an elderly lady who complained that since the 1960s someone walked into her office every five years promising a paperless office and it never happened. The problem is the compunerds manage to put hooks in there to keep you calling them back. If they gave you exactly what you wanted, they'd be out of work. But, guess what, compunerds are glorified clerical workers and high school kids in India will do work much more simply and robustly and quickly off elance.com.
In a lot of scientific work, the open source software on sourceforge.net is BETTER than commercially available software because it is more robustly peer-reviewed. (You'ld freak how many 1980s quant finance models were wrong because of lack of peer review - even minor but significant typos) The commercial houses don't want to give you all the conveniences you need because it puts them out of work. r-language is the statistical package of choice among Wall St quants. Besides, by the time you walk into a place and convince all the bureaucrats to get some package and negotiate the licence and all the internal stupidities, your time is wasted. So it pays to rely on open-source. I believe there is a GNU CAD package out there.
- = - Vasos-Peter John Panagiotopoulos II, Columbia'81+, Bio$trategist BachMozart ReaganQuayle EvrytanoKastorian
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---{Nothing herein constitutes advice. Everything fully disclaimed.}---[Urb sprawl confounds terror] [Remorse begets zeal] [Windows is for Bimbos] [Homeland Security means private firearms not lazy obstructive guards]
And it becomes very obvious that they need much of the money up front to go out and buy matarials/tools. For me that raises a huge red flag.
I use contractors who don't want to be paid a good prortion of the fee until after the customer is satisified. (I've used him for years, he won't acccept the bulk of the payments until after the job is completed to my satisfaction.).
But this customer gets very supsicious when the company doing the job doesn't have the tools or the money to go and buy/rent them.
That screams out run, not walk, fast in the oposite direction.
Yes they do when they pay money up front and then find out you don't have the money to finish the job.
You do realize there are contractors who don't have the money to go out and rent/buy the tools.
No i'm just living in a large east coast city in the US where alot of contractors in various aspects of the field screwing their customers. I've got too many clients who have been taken to the cleaners by these crooks.
I don't know too many developers that can develop 200 acres without a bank loan, or a home builder that can start more than a few spec houses witout borrowing from the bank.
Oh please. No one askes about what they have or don't have. All they want to know is - can the job get done - can it get done to my satisfaction - can it get done within my budget.
Asking for a retainer from a new client is SOP for most industries. No one thinks twice about it.
So now it's ok to rent the tools, as long as you have the money to rent them.
I'm impressed. Bet you they didn't start out doing that though.
So, back to the home based drafting business. Gosh, a business that is starting out.
Maybe they don't need to - or can't afford to - buy state-of-the-art computer equipment, printers, plotters, furniture, faxes and telephones with blue-tooth technology to land their first gig paying less than their investment.
I even bet they can figure out how to deliver a quality work product without going broke in the process.
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