I have been in Sydney today and talked with another newsagent locked out of his computer system – he has no access to his business data. This is the risk of buying software with an annual licence fee and of providing others the ability to connect to your business without appropriate controls.
Now it looks like they will have to go to court to get their data unlocked.
If you are concerned about access to your data being blocked by your software provider ask that they disable any link into your business.
While this behaviour is disgraceful, it’s fairly common in the retail software sector. I’d suggest any store looking at a POS program looks at the backup and data export features in the program.
Once you have a suitable system as part of your disaster recovery strategy, or at the slightest hint of a dispute with the software vendor, export all the data into CSV format.
That way you can recover the data into another program without being held hostage.
This sort of thing really bugs me and I’ve posted a rant about it on my blog.
Paul, I’ve owned Tower Systems 26 years and in my neck of the woods I;d say such behaviour of locking customers out is rare. I have only encountered two suppliers who have done it.
Your recommendation is good for someone who knows a bit about technology. Most newsagents would realise they have the problem once the horse has bolted. hence raising the topic here. Newsagents need to check their supplier relationships.
Mark