For the past few day’s we’ve been having some fun with pricing a few new services we’ve been asked for.
Please take the word ‘fun’ in there are a largely sarcastic comment – put simply I HATE MONEY!

This of course doesn’t help the requirement for accurate pricing

So, as we’ve decided that the MD doesn’t like money (and especially the lack of it) we look to other means of pricing our services.
Mostly this comes down to a couple of simple rules:
1. What are our costs for any given services
2. What (if at all) are our competitors charging for a similar service (though obviously not as good as ours )

With these in mind, my analytical mind kicks in and I’ve got something to work with, in my case this is a basic necessity!

Costing in our company is fairly straight forward:
How much did/do we buy in at?
How much does it cost us to do it?

Now those both seem to be simple questions on the face of it, but you must remember to cost everything – your office costs money to run after all!
So I’ve been trawling through reams of numbers in search of info to assist in the quest, and factoring in things like “Return on Investment” and “Break even points” etc…
The second is a much harder question to answer, as most competitors know who you are and wont tell you their prices. The web is your greatest friend here, as well as your mates and their acting skills (I’ll not add any more info here, I’m sure you know why! )

Suffice to say we got there in the end, knowing we a going to make a profit and are still competitive on the products offered

Now we just have to sell them!

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Firstly I must apologise for not posting here for a while – we’ve gained a couple of large projects requiring most of my time. More stress = more requirement for sleep!
For once I’ve actually been getting some
(ooh er missus!)

Thought I’d share a quick rant with you!

“Microsoft is providing the Browser Choice update to comply with a legal settlement with the European Commission. Microsoft is required to inform customers who currently use Internet Explorer as their default browser that there are other web browser choices available.”

That’s the opening shot from the Microsoft website detailing what and why this stupid thing is (read it here)

It goes that the European Commission, those for who it’s important that bananas have a certain straightness, decided that Europeans needed to have enforced choice of how they viewed the Internet.
We were no longer allowed to simply use the installed version of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, but we had to be offered a choice of which browser to use. Apparently, installing an Internet browser within your own operating system is anti competitive and was an example of Microsoft abusing it’s dominant market position.

I have two points to say…

• Firstly – surely those people who would like to choose their browser HAVE ALREADY DONE SO.
  Downloading Chrome or Firefox wasn’t that difficult for those people who wanted/needed to change was it?
• Secondly – why enforce the choice?
  Surely MOST people don’t actually want to change at all. I NEVER hear clients complaining that their Internet browser is poor quality!

Within my own experience counting the number of clients who have called to ask what this ‘Browser Choice’ thing is, there really was no point to this stupid offering.

I have even experienced some clients accidentally changing browsers when they NEED Internet explorer for some specific business critical software to run.
Admittedly simple to fix but the client has wasted time changing to a different browser, calling us then getting it reset back to where they wanted it in the first place.

Just another pointless waste of European funds – paying idiot bureaucrats €€€€s to make our lives just that little bit more inconvenient.

PLEASE LEAVE THE COMPUTER DECISIONS TO THOSE WHO KNOW WHAT THEY ARE DOING!!!

#Note#
If you would like a quick quiz on some of the stupid rules that the European Commission have passed try this from the BBC

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