I own Tower Systems, software provider to over 1,300 newsagents. I also own one of those newsagencies. For more than 20 years my company, and other major IT companies in the industry, have been consulted about newspaper delivery fee changes well in advance of any change – to ensure newsagents can cope with the change. For the first time in almost 20 years Fairfax has released new delivery fees without consultation. The new fee structure operates outside the agreed IT standards. Either the software companies have to change their software to accommodate the Fairfax surprise or newsagents have to significantly bend their systems to cope. However, by bending their systems it means they use the system in a way that other data flowing from those systems back to Fairfax is unusable.
We are changing our software and providing an update without cost to our newsagent clients. We have taken developers off other work to do this. The total cost to us will be between $5,000 and $10,000. Given the lack of contact from Fairfax on this I see no point in asking for a contribution toward the expense they have imposed upon us.
The Australian Newsagents’ Federation announced the Fairfax delivery fee changes as they were involved in consultation about the matter for some time prior. It is a pity that they, too, did not consider that any newspaper home delivery fee change needs to work with well established IT standards.
If this were a change being imposed by Fairfax on a major trading partner then Fairfax would have approached the matter differently. It is disappointing that Fairfax and the ANF have been ignorant of the operational needs of newsagents.
It is worth noting that the folks at News are well organised when it comes to interfacing with newsagent software systems. Just a few months ago they took us into their confidence on changes before they were announced to ensure that existing systems work. This is how such changes should be handled.