| December 19, 2000 | 03 00050 61 00121901 |
Mr. Matt Placek
mplacek@wegener.com
Wegener Communications
Technology Park
11350 Technology Circle
Deluth, GA 30097
| Subject: | SDS Sales and Installation Planning |
Dear Matt,
Thanks for your letter today expressing continued interest in using SDS. Your understandings are basically correct, opening an opportunity to pioneer in the next wave of technology for knowledge management, as an early adopter of SDS. The level of effort entailed to get you going, including visiting in Georgia, will cost about $5K - $10K. This is not significant for an organization, but for an individual it is a big expense, therefore I am willing to absorb some of the expense, so that your personal outlay is limited to $2K, as set out in the record.
If that is acceptable, then I suggest you contact some people who have gone through the experience of learning SDS, so you can verify in advance of going forward, that this is something you want to undertake. Here is what I mean. SDS, as explained in the Typical Day Scenario, entails changing existing work practice. In particular, some of this change is counterintuitive because it conflicts with traditional ways of doing things that evolved in a manual world.
Instead of dashing off an immediate reply to a letter, telling other people what we know, using SDS entails incorporating a received letter into the SDS record, analysing it, assigning subjects, and making alignment by linking to related history. This process seems at first to take more time in order to construct deeper understanding, so that we can discover and craft what we know. However, the result actually saves time and money by producing a stronger response, under the rule noted by Stephen Covey in his book 7 Habits of Highly Successful People....
Until experience is gained, there is pressure to skip this sound advice applied by SDS, including well known homilies like Look before you leap! and Be Prepared!, because when people have a busy work day, long term savings are overwhelmed by immediate desire to react and ignore future costs. The challenge is to use SDS consistently, so that it becomes a skill like using the alphabet, playing a piano, throwing a football, or casting a fishing line. That is why a Communication Manager is so useful, because that role does the tasks so that you can benefit from intelligence, while gradually learning to create it yourself. Since we are contemplating omitting the Com Manager role, and in fact you want to become your own Com Manager, I suggest you call Wayne and/or Jeff to visit with them about their experience traveling the road you are contemplating.
Paying out hard earned cash is an essential commitment to make an even harder investment of initial personal time, for a month or so, to get into the swing of using SDS. If we can get through the first several months, where you make steady progress using SDS, then a critical mass of personal capital from using and learning SDS, should become self-staining in saving time and improving earnings.
Accordingly, please let me know if you wish to proceed, and we can plan for me to visit in Georgia to carry out installation, as explained in the record.
THE WELCH COMPANY
Rod Welch
rowelch@attglobal.net