00:00.00 archpodnet Hello and welcome back to the crm archeology podcast episode 284 and we have been talking about what to do when your suppliers go out of business because it often happens kind of in the moment and you are not ready for it. So Heather and I had talked in segment one and I know that Doug had some stuff that he would like to add so Doug. Ah, what would you like to say. 00:25.72 Doug So why Andrew you really played up what I was going to say to be much much more insightful than what? ah it will be um so I was actually thinking about how so it's a slightly different. 00:27.32 archpodnet It better be it. It better be great. It better be great. 00:41.85 Doug And the Uk and that you just because of different legal reasons and in other places around the world. Um, there's a lot more private sector work done for private sector arche or private sector development. Um I mean you still get that in the states and stuff but there's ah, a much. Larger range of what we call archeological consultants so these are people who will basically be hired by a construction firm and engineering firm. Um possibly bricklayer. Yeah, it's without getting into a lot of details principal contractor. It's this huge thing in this. 01:13.23 archpodnet Right. 01:18.97 Doug And the Uk. But whoever that principal contractor is they'll usually hire archeologists or they'll hire on an archaeologist to advise them and tell them you know who what they're getting and what they need to what services they they need to buy and then do. It quotes back the consultant will say yeah these are good. These are bad yada yada um, but you you sort of end up talking to the consultants or or sort of the larger consultants and they happen to work for some of the large engineering firms which is. Actually a lot of the same ah large engineering firms that we have over here are the same that you same you'd have in the states like is it Ter Techch is um ah they just bought someone. Um you know I'm trying to think of of course I'm now going to go bla. Ah Ms. And. 01:56.14 archpodnet I. 02:08.38 archpodnet Okay. 02:11.40 Doug Um, but it doesn't really matter. But you talk to these guys. Um, and it's how they manage their their archaeologists. So but the actual contractors where we sort of divide archeology into consultants and then contractors and then obviously you have your government archeologists who eventually have to see the finals. Sign off and checking and stuff like that and how they tend to do it is they like to keep sort of a mooj of a potential contractors. Um working. Ah, for them or undertaking projects. So for small projects. They may not actually go with the cheapest company. Um, they may go with maybe like a mid most expensive one or maybe even the most expensive one and sort of cost. 03:05.60 Doug Read out their work that they always know that they have a good couple. Well usually you know by default for tendering you usually want at least 3 tenders um government contracts usually require at these 3 tenders and stuff like that so they might keep you know a good 3 or 4 maybe 5 maybe more? um. 03:13.24 archpodnet Okay. 03:25.10 Doug Contractors who they regularly work with and they sort of spread out the work. Um, and so it it becomes essentially more about risk management instead of price necessarily. Ah, this goes back to like the whole. Um I think we talked about this months ago about you know, not getting a contract and. 03:34.59 archpodnet The. 03:34.63 Heather And. 03:43.46 Doug Think I had mentioned this is that sometimes there's other considerations other than being the cheapest out there and so that's sort of 1 way that yeah yeah. 03:47.50 Heather Yes, this happens this happens and in America to there's on call on call contracts. Basically yeah, but they've whittled it down to a few vendors. Yeah. 03:57.30 archpodnet Um. 04:03.70 Doug So yeah and they and they usually like to keep a couple vendors and they throw work um to different vendors just to keep them going so they always have they always have options. Um I think that's that's sort of 1 way that ah that. 04:12.48 Heather Right. 04:20.27 Doug People end up sort of managing that risk of of your um whoever it is whoever your supplier is yeah you sort of rotate around. Um and that way you always have a backup that being said, sorry. Aside like ah Ams what they were a third is the price of everyone else. 04:45.98 archpodnet It It was um, measurably cheaper it it depends again, you know without getting too far in the weeds of you know what? you want? what you don't but it was um, ah yeah on what you're doing but I would say it was at least it was a nice like like. 04:47.84 Heather Okay. 04:54.44 Heather It depends on what you're testing. Yeah. 05:01.27 Heather Half. Yes. 05:03.50 archpodnet 60% cheaper like easily you know? yeah it was amazingly cheaper when I first heard about it I was like what you must be kidding I can't get that. Yeah yeah. 05:05.77 Doug She's wow at. 05:09.26 Heather Yeah, people wouldn't believe me but when I introduced them to direct a MS people like what there's no way. That's that that price like it is yeah. 05:19.80 Doug But I mean had a mix I mean I If anyone's theres for listening from if anyone from that company is listening apologies for this but it does seem like if you're that much Cheaper. You probably don't have much of a a reserve and. If something goes wrong then yeah, you'll go out of business which I guess is. 05:42.11 Heather Yeah, but they've been around for over ten years so I think what happened and again this is just speculation that it um other their competitors just kept going up and they kept they kept saying okay, we this is. We're good here. 05:47.26 archpodnet Yeah. 05:58.68 Heather Like these prices are good I saw a gap expanding now. This could just be in my imagination I didn't really continue to watch the market carefully but you know I was seeing when people come to me and I would say you should use direct Ams they would come to me and say this is what so and so is charging me. 06:06.57 archpodnet Yeah I didn't either. 06:18.43 Heather And it seemed like that gap was getting wider. So I think that direct a MS just did not continue to increase their prices where these other companies did and maybe they they did increase their prices they did do that but they weren't doing it at the same level and ah because they looked at. 06:23.58 archpodnet Um, yeah. 06:32.78 archpodnet Ah. 06:38.14 Heather They looked at their bottom line now. It couldn't It's not just we don't know why they left the business. Ah, really so there could be other reasons could have nothing to do with the fiscal side of things. So um, anyway, there's there's they are at a University I think they were at a University actually. 06:43.66 archpodnet Are. 06:58.00 Heather Um, so it could have something to do with that. Um, so so anyway, we we don't know what it is. 07:01.24 archpodnet Um. 07:03.80 Doug Yeah, well so that's sort of a aside and I was thinking about like it's not quite software but you do end up with that sort of loss leader people give out software for years and years for free to basically drive their competition out of business. 07:05.89 archpodnet Um, pray. 07:23.10 Doug And then you end up with only one software that does what you needed to do and then that's a lot harder to sort of move vendors around especially so you know something like a trial like relatively Speaking. Ah, there's differences are trials and how they're made and you know if they're forged or if they're welded together in the quality and stuff like that. But for the most part there's not huge barriers of use. Um, you know, maybe slightly different sizes your hand can adapt. Whatever. But you know software. There's There's usually an investment of actually learning the ins and outs of ah of a software I think that's a ah lot harder for archaeologists um to switch and move between and to be more careful and you really can't do that whole idea of like oh let's have 3 different suppliers that we sort or. 4 or 5 that we keep passing stuff through is it's such a huge cost of like learning using 3 different types of Gis Software um is really hard and then yeah you sort of end up, especially with software with one there. There is the one that has. 08:25.86 archpodnet Um. 08:35.76 Doug You know, eighty or ninety percent of the markets and a couple of other people like that I think that's a lot harder I'm thinking so from my background you know gis. Yeah so in terms of commercial I mean I'm not sure. There's anyone else out there in commercial other than Esri these days. Um I know that there are some smaller ones that. Ah, back in the day but they essentially either go ezri for you know a commercial setup for gis. Um, some really tiny small ones that at any point go out of business and then you basically end up with ah open source. You know qgis. 09:11.91 archpodnet Um, yeah, right. 09:14.47 Doug And ah grass and well so actually I mainly use they they pretty much eszri help kill off or not kill off but cut the support of grass from the federal government. Um, and so you you can now use grass as like a ah plugin inside qgis but that's. 09:33.30 archpodnet Um, yeah, it. 09:33.73 Doug Ah, kind of you're almost down to two choices when it comes to um gis I mean there's a bunch of choices. They'll get me wrong, but realistically the 2 big ones are Qgis and Esri. 09:46.96 archpodnet Right? And that's been my experience totally. But I would say I've totally gone the qgis route and this is coming from somebody again in an academic world where I could if I really wanted you know, um, put money aside just like for the carbon 14 dates. But money aside like ah ear market for esri but I have to say over the years Esri's prices have gotten so insane that I'm like I'm not going to buy this for this. You know I find that. Qgis does everything I absolutely need and I it's one of those things where Esri has really left a bad taste in my mouth because it's one of those things it feels like Microsoft you know where they hook you and then just keep ah keep pushing the prices up and up and up and I'm like no I don't it's. 10:25.46 Heather Um. 10:31.17 archpodnet I don't need all these functions and all this whatever you know and they'll try and make you scared like oh qgis, it's open source who knows it's like no no, it's fine and it works great. So um. It's funny because in a way it's like I wish Esri the best but I don't at the same time because they of their business practices. So um, I'm kind of totally q I s for the win you know so there are are times when companies go too far in that we are trying to be the overlord and I feel like Esri totally has. 11:01.90 Doug I Think part of that also is like so for listeners you have to be real careful about going open source and that open source projects for the most part depending on the scale need to have some sort of business plan right. 11:01.78 Heather Do. 11:02.80 archpodnet Yeah. 11:18.88 Doug And so like que js the reason like it's become the dominant one is because there's actually a bunch of different smaller companies that essentially sell development and work on packages attached to ah Qgis or the'll do development and stuff like that and so there's actually know. 11:28.10 Heather But. 11:31.56 archpodnet Right. 11:37.27 Doug Business model that can keep that open source software program or program. You know the the projects if it's you know some projects might have multiple programs. Whatever um, yeah I think 1 thing that if if you're going down that route of open source. Um. Don't necessarily think you can zero out your budget and think about actually donating like like instead of giving like you know? Okay, maybe if you switch from esry to qgis. Okay, yeah, maybe you take 25% off or 50% off of your budget there but then find a way to. 11:58.31 archpodnet Oh. 12:13.66 Doug Donate that money I mean a lot of those open source projects allow you to donate or become sponsors So that's ah, a big thing now is like some very successful ones. You'll have like Gold Silver Platinum Diamond level sponsors who give you like. 12:15.83 archpodnet Um, yeah. 12:32.80 archpodnet Um. 12:32.95 Doug Significant I've seen some open source projects with like you know 110000 like the top level and these are like large companies that um, do that they just they they give a portion of it which is very hard to justify in some kind some company some organizations because they'll be like wait. We can just. 12:36.50 archpodnet And right. Yeah. 12:52.74 Doug This money and everyone else Benefit. We're not getting something that gives us a competitive edge Yada Yadda Yada but um, it is something that you should really consider about if you do go down open source is figuring out ways to either give back the community or to donates I'm thinking of like software that has. Was open source. So um, we I'm thinking of um Rti which we talked about reflectance transformation imaging um for anyone who is not aware but basically at the at the way of you take a bunch of pictures with with. Different light angles and then you could put them all into a software and you can in the software change the lighting direction and it's amazing for like say stonework or you know rock art or homestone stuff like that where yeah, you might have a very light. Um. 13:46.13 archpodnet Um. 13:50.79 Doug Bits of writing or lot of weathering that sort of removed a lot of Image. You can change the light on that and sort of figure out what's happening. Um and they used to be an open source ah software that sort of did that which was Rti builder and that was from the cultural heritage Imaging. Um. Which they're a nonprofit but I think the last time they release released a new version might have been like 14008 maybe 2006 and it got to a point where basically. 14:20.65 archpodnet Um, yeah. 14:26.17 Doug Um, they there used to be the lot of forums of like help I have windows ten How how can I make it. It's not working and then like you you have to get really technical. Um, you know, changing code on your computer. 14:35.77 archpodnet Ah. 14:44.26 Doug Doing it as an admin and running it by command line all this sort of stuff to try to make it last or forever and recently like they Dave Dave just said it Dis continue because you know there's a cost. There's definitely openource. There's a cost and people's time right. 14:49.64 archpodnet He yeah. 14:57.41 archpodnet Yeah. Yet. 15:03.76 Doug And so there's a new one. Um, that's out there relight which I think was university of kisa in italy um ended up creating it and basically after after 10 years and when the the other open source one just didn't do it I think they created a different one. But yeah there, there's ah. 15:17.46 archpodnet Right. 15:21.69 Doug Yeah, be real careful with ah open source and make sure that there's actually some sort of business model that will keep that project going that will keep you being able to like um actually I know that's probably applicable to all your um, all your so suppliers and it's. 15:26.00 archpodnet Totally. 15:37.37 archpodnet I mean. 15:39.80 Doug Lot harder to tell because you know you don't have like their accounts and and wherever but if you know if you have suppliers who are charging a tenth of what all their competitors are There's a good chance at some point either 1 they're doing that to capture the market and then. At some point they're going to hike all their prices and you're going to have vendor lock in and be screwed or they might go out of business if they don't have any running capital. 16:05.71 archpodnet Yeah, you you know, um your your story there I I totally agree and it reminded me of something from from my own past and that I'll talk about when we come back for segment 3 see you guys in a minute.