Hi,
first of all let me say that, having been at the customer end of things for a long time I agree with you that presentations are something (prospective) customers have learned to expect as a given.
This is one aspect where the low price of EA may seem counter-productive. I am not trying to justify the attitude of the resellers with which you have dealt, however you need to realize that there is not much money to be made out of selling EA alone. Given the low price of EA, the margin a reseller makes is not a large amount - in fact, if you bought, say, 20 licences of Professional edition, the money reseller would make would probably cover the travel expenses to visit your offices, but would probably not cover the cost of the time of reseller's staff giving the presentation.
Also given that there is no geographical exclusivity, one could easily ask a reseller for a presentation - and then buy the licences from another reseller (there are some that offer a bit of a discount, coming off their margin).
Also, it is (or used to be, not sure whether this has changed in any way) extremely easy for anyone to become a reseller. In fact, given the nature of the tool, my guess is that majority of resellers will be small companies, many of them one-man-shops. The overhead associated with the sales efforts would be unpleasant for a larger company, but simply impossible for a smaller shop.
Sparx with their pricing structure (and given the customizability and flexibility of the tool) is clearly aiming for large volume of sales - and the high number of sold licences is a good indication that they are succeeding. Comparison to MS Office is not entirely correct, but not all that incorrect either. You are not likely to get a presentation of MS Office - even though MS Office will likely cost you more than EA.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly - it is extremely difficult to present a tool like EA, especially to an audience that does not use CASE tools on a daily basis (such as management). The audience is likely not to distinguish between the tool and UML in general, between what the tool can do and how can the company use it.
It is also unlikely that a reseller who is not familiar with your specific requirements would be able to do an effective presentation of a tool as feature-rich as EA.
To be entirely fair, Sparx Systems does provide a 30-day evaluation version as well as a quite a bit of reading (not great, but not bad either).
Personally, I am glad Sparx focuses on what they do well (i.e. building great CASE tool) and not on efforts that would only increase the overhead - as that would inevitably mean that EA would become more expensive.
Having said all that, I do see very frequently that EA's low price backfires a little, especially in the corporate environment - EA is often not taken seriously enough. The lack of quality pre-sales and post-sales support is of course an issue - but at the end of the day it is about the balance between what you get and what you pay for it.
Bruno
Hi Everybody,
Let me share my concern about EA future. I'm using EA for 3 years, recently moved to new company and, of course, suggested to buy EA. My manager reviewed features, saw demo and asked me to arrange presentation to other managers and technical leads. Presentation performed by the vendor representative. "No problem" I replied. Reality showed that I had been mistaken.
In Poland there are 3 official representatives. First one answered that they do not held presentations, and regarding to Java projects they usually recommend Visual Paradigm (sic!). Second said he will call back. He didn't. Third one replied that they do not provide free presentations. I can order presentation for 2000 zl (about $650), 50% paid in advance!
Dear Sparx partners. Presentation is very conventional and usual request in medium and big companies. Trials and features list on webpage will convince developers, but to buy license it's necessary to convince managers. I know that presentations itself are not profitable, but without it we'll not buy licence and will not order trainings! One of the partnes said that "pay for presentation" is an official Sparx statement. It is really true?
It's not sufficient to have good products. If you will make your customers unsatisfied - you'll lost everything. IT market history is full of good products lost in competition with worse ones.
