* A lesson for ASPs and users
I just got an interesting letter from a reader about how she had been a user of an ASP service that provides what is seen as a complete business management solution for realtors. This service was derived from the company’s desktop solution and the ASP is considered one of the leading players in its market.
Having used the service for some time the reader tried to import some data and something went wrong. She called the ASP’s tech support who exported her data (the export apparently produces a huge Excel spreadsheet), tried to “fix” it and then re-imported it. The rest of the story is long, complex, and for my reader, ultimately a disaster – she contends that the data lost in the mad whirl of importing and exporting cost her a couple of clients.
I talked to the ASP’s technical support and as far as I can determine the reader’s version of events matches the ASPs. What surprised me was the ASP’s response to my questions about backups: It turns out that data recovery for any given client is a hit or miss affair and that the company even has a special group to handle such problems.
What this means is that data integrity is not and was not a core architectural issue of the system. This is an incredible oversight when we’re talking about a service that people trust the entire management of their businesses to.
In an attempt to compensate the reader, the ASP offered her 3 months of free service, which hardly covers her costs of having an assistant massage her data back to life and for losing clients.
The reader is not litigiously minded, but she plans is to migrate her business to a competing ASP and simply have nothing more to do with the original service provider. Nothing more, that is, than telling her friends and colleagues that they shouldn’t even consider using the ASP’s services.
There are key lessons for both users and ASPs:
For users:
1. Make sure you know how data can be recovered and how far back the backups go.
2. Make sure you regularly (at least monthly) download your dataset and keep a copy securely.
3. Make sure that the export format isn’t proprietary.
For ASPs:
1. Make sure you tell your users about how their data can be recovered and the limitations involved.
2. Make sure all user data is treated with equal importance and that no user data is a special case where integrity is concerned.
3. Provide a data rollback option in the user interface even if it winds up simply sending a message to a tech for action.
4. If you try to compensate a user for a problem they have experienced with your service make sure that the compensation is commensurate with the pain and cost borne by the user.
