Our customers help us improve our software all the time. We regularly hear about some eccentric SCORM problem or Package Property that would help make the product better, and we strive to include that as quickly as we can.
Concepts of listening and improvement, though, need to extend beyond the core products themselves. I’ve been working with a prospect on the SCORM Engine, working toward contractual agreement. In doing so, he discovered what he felt was a hole in our agreements. Specifically, he couldn’t find any route by which he could opt out of the agreement if we failed to hold up our end of the bargain.
Incredulous, I told him I was sure it was there, but that I would check in with our legal staff at Waller Law. Wouldn’t you know it, the basic document we’ve been using for years doesn’t include that specific right. Well, frankly, if we’re not doing what we indicated we would, what right do we have to lock you into your deal? The answer, obviously, is none.
So, all of our basic agreements have been changed and we’re moving forward with some new language. Specifically,
Customer may terminate this Agreement if Licensor is in material breach of its obligations under this Agreement and such breach is not cured within thirty (30) days of receipt of written notice from Customer describing the breach in reasonable detail.
If we’re wrong, well, we’re wrong. So, changes have been made to our “annotated legal documents” as well, section 7, if you care. [If anyone cares, the annotated legal documents have been great for us. Prospects seem to love them and I'm not answering the same questions all the time anymore!]
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One message I’ve been delivering to our customers and prospects a lot lately is this… partial SCORM conformance might actually be worse than no SCORM conformance. If you’re going to bother with SCORM at all, be sure that you finish the job so that you can reap the benefits of interoperability and compatibility.
One customer who obviously took that to heart was ELogic Learning. ELogic has licensed two of our products, the SCORM Engine and SCORM Untethered. The news of the day, though, is that ELogic’s eSSential version 8.22 was recently certified by ADL. Check out the formal certification notice here. Completing an LMS certification is no small task, and we congratulate ELogic on their accomplishment.
We’re also excited to note that no fewer than three of the first twelve LMS’s certified for SCORM 2004 3rd Edition use the SCORM Engine as their delivery mechanism.
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We had to take the SCORM Test Track offline for a bit yesterday to upgrade servers…apparently that caused withdrawal pains for some. The new server should be back up and running today with plenty of room to grow, but if we need to upgrade again, we’ll be sure to form a support group for the John’s of the world.
My name is John, and I’m a TestTrack-a-holic. I think it was the great hair band Cinderella that sang, “Don’t know what you got till it’s gone”.
After spending the entire day without Test Track, I realize how much life sucks without it. Having to test all day on [major LMS provider name omitted] was not fun.
thanks guys,
Rustici Addict #871
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Getting on the federal government’s GSA schedule is a pain in the neck. Luckily we have a great assistant in Jean to trek through all the rigamarole. Step #472 Part Q involves a thorough investigation of your company’s background and success in working with clients. Part of this background check is a survey of existing clients conducted by Dun and Bradstreet’s Open Ratings program. This survey seeks our clients’ opinions on everything about our business from reliability and responsiveness to product quality and business relations. We’re proud, but not surprised, that we earned a score of 96, putting us in the top tier of all evaluated companies. We know that we have very happy clients, but it’s nice to have somebody else confirm and publicize it.
For us, customer service isn’t about a 12-step quality improvement program, formal policies or sending out a monthly newsletter, it’s more about just doing what’s right. Our clients pay for and receive top of the line solutions. Along with those solutions comes top of the line service and support. We’re a small company and maybe we’re a bit old fashioned, but I believe that any of our customers should be able to pick up the phone and chat with Tim or I about whatever is on their mind and that we should do whatever it takes to ensure their satisfaction. The customer may not always be right, but the customer always deserves to be heard and have his problems addressed to the best of our abilities. D&B only surveyed 20 customers, but had they surveyed them all I’m confident our rating would remain high. Many would suggest that such an open service-oriented business model won’t scale well and would provide a huge drain on valuable internal resources. So far that hasn’t been the case, we currently have about 100 customers using our SCORM products. These products reach millions of learners and yet our support “burden” has remained minimal. I’ve been reflecting a bit on how we pull this off, how does such a small company exceptionally serve so many customers? The quick answer is that our products just work. We take a lot of pride in producing high quality software which doesn’t need a lot of attention. We’re tightly specialized and deeply knowledgeable so we can be very focused and exceptionally good at what we do. We also hire tremendous personnel, without them, we could never achieve all that we have.
You can see the details of our Open Ratings evaluation on their website at: https://prod.openratings.com/certified/index.pl?page=duns&orderid=1176041.
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Congratulations are in order for SDA Studio Kft as well. In November, they completed the SCORM 2004 2nd Edition Certification of their Neptun.Net platform. This follows their prior SCORM 1.2 Certification in November 2005. SDA Studio Kft is the leading provider of online training in Hungary and has made perfect use of the multiple standard support found in the SCORM Engine. SDA Studio Kft also served as the impetus for the inclusion of the multi-lingual capability now found in all installations of the SCORM Engine.
From a personal perspective, I find the work we did with SDA Studio Kft fascinating. Ten years ago, we never could have found each other. Today, we were able to complete a full SCORM implementation in the context of their existing application from thousands of miles away without meeting face to face on a single occasion.
Congratulations to SDA Studio Kft on their accomplishment and dual certification.
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