ARCHICAD TRIAL VERSIONS: EVALUATION PERIOD IS TOO SHORT BEFORE SOFTWARE EXPIRES
Business is All About Marketing
Just a thought. (We Adelaide Architects are very good with spotting Advertising & Marketing solutions) If times are tough then it is time to market more effectively. I am only in business at all because I found a niche for picking up the jobs the other Architects didn't want and I worked out my rates on what I needed to live on working a pretty full week. Most Architects charge what they think they are worth, rating themselves against
other professionals or what the market rates are. I have started & been growing my practice through tough economic times. When things pick up I will change my strategy, but until then it is all about keeping it lean & providing value for money.
Autodesk, Graphisoft and Marketing: Trial Software expires too quickly
Autodesk picked up its lions share of the market by supplying the kids at Uni with free software about 20 years ago. They marketed for
the future and not the present. It all came back to price. Once these kids got work they used the product they knew. It took a few years but it was very effective strategy. After using Archicad (as an average bloke) I can safely say the product takes about 2 to 3 months of use to get a proper understanding of what is going on. This is if you can devote 8 hours a day to the thing. Most practitioners like me cannot afford that much time as we have to earn a living at the same time. I am now seven months into learning the product and am only now feeling a little familiar with it. I have almost finished my first project and am feeling pretty pleased with myself as this means that I am finally coming to grips with the program as a basic user. I can see that there is a lot to learn ahead of me but at least I have a foundation. Like most trial software ArchiCad lasts for a month before it runs out. This is way too short a time to be useful to anyone. If Graphisoft was prepared to put out free 4 month trials based on hourly usage of 8 hours a day I reckon they would do much better in this tough market. Now is the perfect time for Graphisoft to introduce a scheme like this, as Architects have time on their hands due to this sluggish economy.
Software Instruction Courses are Overpriced
These days no-one has money to pay for training courses especially as they are charged out at rates they think they are worth (just because that is what they could get in a good economy), so how about Graphisoft employing contractors that they hire out to businesses for in-house training a month or two at a time. Long enough to run through a complete job with staff and actually work producing some product, not just being a teacher. If those in-house teachers only charged minimally more than standard contractor rates this would attract those smaller businesses
into using the product. The contractor would build up standard office procedures, provide training and most importantly produce work at the
same time. This way at the end of a month or two the office may effectively have been trained at little or no cost as there has been a measurable value in output of work from the contractor as well as the harder to measure value of the training itself. I did this for a couple of small businesses back in the mid 90's with Autocad when that was still fairly new and they flourished whilst other bigger businesses folded. Graphisoft re-sellers could handle this business & take a small amount (say 15 percent) of the wages as a handling fee. This will give Graphisoft a market in an area that they currently will never penetrate.... The contractors would get experience in a variety of offices in times when employment is difficult to find and it will provide a trickle of money to the re-sellers for running the contracting business. Give this 5 years and when the economy has picked up the re-sellers will have a much larger market to work with and they can start making the big bucks again, running those training courses and seminars that they currently charge corporate (ridiculous) prices for.
