ServiceNow slammed for 'tone deaf' letter telling customers contracts can't be tweaked as COVID-19 batters businesses ServiceNow, the company that sees itself dominating enterprise software via workflow tools, has told customers contractual arrangements will not be altered as it wrestles with economic stresses accompanying a pandemic. According to Forrester analyst Duncan Jones, a letter from Service Now CFO Gina Mastantuono explained to …
This is the approach of all big companies: find a process, stick to it, and make sure nobody (clients, staff) can get access to anyone at a level who can do anything but shrug.
... I have been assured by DXC that my compulsory redundancy, is absolutely standard - timeline, terms, process. Nothing to do with Covid19. Not affected by Covid19 - or that fact that the world is literally on fire at the moment - just routine workforce adjustment. Much more important that some management droid several levels above my line manager achieves his FY21Q1 target than I part from DXC on good terms.
Maybe I'll write a book on just how shit they are --- I've got loads of material. I suppose it'll come as a suprise to nobody here though :-)
As an ex DXCer, and CSC before that, who left with VR about 2 years ago, and can definitely say the grass is greened outside of DXC.
Not to boast, more for encouragement and provide some hope, but since leaving DXC, where my wage had stagnated for ~10 years, I now earn over double what I was on at DXC, for exactly the same type of work, and the atmosphere is so much nicer without the constant doom and gloom from within DXC!
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With the added issue that no matter how many times a department manager will tell you they understand this, they'll still demand a customisation instead of changing their processes, then call the system broken because it works how they asked for it to work, then call it expensive because the support costs have tripled because they outsourced the customisation work to an offshore code farm that couldn't give a fuck about anything beyond getting the next customisation contract.
I'm not bitter. Honest.
Surely that can't be legal. If I were one of their customers I would be aksing my lawyers for the correct way to stop paying them and tell them to "Get Tae!" asap.
I work for a company that supplies a SaaS system to caterers, cafes and restaurants. Obviously all of our customers had their business fall of a cliff but where they have been able to continue at all we have renegotiated contracts and billing terms to keep as many of them as working businesses and customers as possible. Seems ServiceNow would rather their customers go bust.
If you willingly sign, it's on you. At a previous company, Oracle made them sign a "high watermark" agreement, where even if you stop using some of their products, you have to pay, at minimum, what you paid last year. You are free to replace what you don't use with increase usage of the products you are using, or to use new products. You just can't reduce payments. No idea how it got passed legal.
Probably had nothing to do with the legal department, I'm sure Legal was told to rubber stamp the contract by the very upset management that wanted to sign the contract.
But, as I've learned from painful life experience, people don't want to be educated on the negatives of their decisions; either they learn it themselves or they don't wish to learn about them at all. So either this will make management question the wisdom to signing contracts in the upcoming future with ServiceNow, or they'll simply go on with the status quo. But either way, no matter what other people will say about this incident, it won't matter to them: they'll only believe their own opinions.
They read it but let me tell you how this happens.
The highest management meets the vendor's highest management plus sales team (somewhere in a nice cosy environment, far from the crowd) and they agree on higher details and sign the contract leaving the finer details to be solved during the implantation. The contract is then handed downstream for comments but if you find something that is not right, nobody can go back to the CxO, tell him he was suckered into this contract and he'd better cancel the whole thing.
After this, customer support team will try to mend things while the vendor will religiously stick to a contract that is inevitably slanted in their favor. You don't like it ? This is what your CxO has signed. You go to your CxO? He'll tell you to "work with our partner to make things work".
I've been through this several times.
Absolutely that's the way it works, with an additional step - between the highest management signing and the finer details, there's a big announcement about how much better the new is going to be and how much will be saved. Then half the workers on the old proceses are ditched and replaced with SNOW customisation 'experts'...
Having been a part of the vendor sales team, that's exactly how it works. Totally agree - except for the word "implantation" unless you meant "implementation". But there's also another side to it. Large customers take 3-6 months to whet and sign contracts whereas their CxOs put pressure on vendor to start work immediately. Ergo, we end up where we end up. This hasn't changed in my last 20 years of experience in software sales and marketing.
The problem we have here is that a contract is just that, a CONTRACT. A legally binding agreement, jointly entered, voluntarily, for the benefit of both parties. You don't just get to go in and change the terms whenever you like, no matter what the outside situation. You wouldn't like it if a service on which you depended said "Nope, I know we agreed to that price but we can't make enough profit at that price so we aren't going to honor the agreement". It goes both ways.
Most contracts have a "Force Majure" clause, and Covid should be enough to trigger it. If you signed the agreement without one, well, the onus is on you. (And, from the sounds of it, anybody who signed with them apparently deserves what they got. You signed a contract for crap service, you got the crap service for which you signed)
It is right to take up contract modifications on a case-by-case basis, it is not right to unilaterally change the contracts across the board unless every contract is canceled using an existing provision and then a new one signed with different conditions. Hopefully, all of this makes people more cognizant of the contracts that they sign and hold their future vendors to a higher standard.
Actually, no.
Many contracts do not have a 'force Majeure' clause. Such a clause is not specifically recognized in UK (and many other countries) law - its more of a Gallic law thing.
Additionally, many suppliers - especially in SAAS do not let customers modify their standard contract clauses - and I work for a multi billion US company.... You will rarely find Force Majeure in such a contract.
While clause does not stand on its own in UK law, it is widely used and valid, even in UK contracts.
https://lmgtfy.com/?q=force+majeure+in+uk+law
You are of course correct that most SAAS suppliers don't let customers modify their standard contract clauses, you either agree with the contract or don't use the service. However, Force Majeure has nothing to do with letting customers change the contract.
You are incorrect however that the clause isn't in most SAAS contracts. I just got done reviewing each of the ones we have, including Microsoft, and they all have Force Majeure clauses. Even Salesforce has Force Majeure. Even ORACLE, the worse of the worst, has Force Majeure.
What multi-billion US company do you work for that doesn't have lawyers to review and enforce contracts?
"You wouldn't like it if a service on which you depended said "Nope, I know we agreed to that price but we can't make enough profit at that price so we aren't going to honor the agreement". It goes both ways."
And yet, if you put more bums on seats, the SaaS provider wants more money off you. So when you have no choice but take bums off seats, and use far less of the SaaS, then why should you not pay less? After all, as you say, it works both ways.
What if a woman is up against a male candidate who seems and interviews as the best person for the job?
It's all well and good saying stuff like "more women", but you'd be better off investigating the root causes (education, opportunity, stigma, exposure,etc) in why there is a dearth of females in the first place.
Because someone isn't the best at a job just because they're female. In a way, you're being sexist - you may think it's positive discrimination, but it's still discrimination!
What do I want? Equality of opportunity. Meritocracy. Nobody held back or given a free pass just because they meet X criteria that isn't just suitability for the role.
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