Enterprise Architecture

Not one to normally publically gripe on a vendor, but a recent customer experience with an online purchase is a great example of why organizations can’t ignore data management investments.

I have been a regular user of a note taking app for several years. All my dicussions with clients, vendors, and even notes from conferences wind up here. I put in pictures, screen shots, upload presentations, and capture web pages. So, it isn’t a surprise that this note taking vendor wants to move me up intp a premium version. And, for $50 a year, it’s not a big deal for me to do even if it just means I’m paying for more space rather than using all the features in the premium package.

So, this morning, I click the upgrade button and viola! My order is taken and shows up in my iTunes account order history.

As this app is web, desktop, and device based and the vendor is born out of the app age, the expectation is that my account status should just automatically convert. I mean, every other business app I have does this. Why shouldn’t this one?

As it turns out, my purchased premium service is no where to be found. To get immediate support, as only offered in premium service, you need to be able to log in as a premium customer. So, instead of an easy and quick fix, I spend over an hour trying to get answers through a support site that shows the issue but an answer that doesn’t work. I also see that this is an issue going back over a year. I try entering in my issue through “contact us” only to find that I get routed back to the support forum and can’t even log a ticket. I find an obscure post where the vendor’s Twitter handle for support is listed and fire off a frustrated Tweet (which goes out to my followers as well which I’m assuming is not something this vendor would prefer).

So let’s break down the data management issue:

Read more

I’m not one to normally publicly gripe on a vendor, but a recent customer experience with an online purchase is a great example of why organizations can’t ignore data management investments.

I have been a regular user of a note-taking app for several years. All my discussions with clients, vendors, and even notes from conferences wind up here. I put in pictures, screen shots, upload presentations, and capture web pages. So it isn’t a surprise that this note-taking vendor wants to move me up into a premium version. And for $50 a year, it’s not a big deal for me to do even if it just means I’m paying for more space rather than using all the features in the premium package.

So, this morning, I click the upgrade button and voila! My order is taken and shows up in my iTunes account order history.

As this app is web-, desktop-, and device-based and the vendor is born out of the app age, the expectation is that my account status should just automatically convert. I mean, every other business app I have does this. Why shouldn’t this one?

As it turns out, my purchased premium service is nowhere to be found. To get immediate support, as only offered in premium service, you need to be able to log in as a premium customer. So instead of an easy and quick fix, I spend over an hour trying to get answers through a support site that shows the issue but an answer that doesn’t work. I also see that this is an issue going back for over a year. I try entering in my issue through “contact us” only to find that I get routed back to the support forum and can’t even log a ticket. I find an obscure post where the vendor’s Twitter handle for support is listed and fire off a frustrated tweet (which goes out to my followers as well, which I’m assuming is not something this vendor would prefer).

So let’s break down the data management issue:

Read more