JMHO JB
At 03:45 PM 5/18/2005, you wrote:
On 5/18/05, cono <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Hi Chad, > > I train people in groups of 4 to 6 persons. That takes them 4 hours. > After that, they not only know where the differences between MsO and OOo > are, they also have learnt: > a - how to use an editor as it has to be done; (know how many time > people lose day after day by ineffective use of their editor?) > b - how to make use of serveral of OOo's great features.
Okay, so it goes from 25 hours to 4, but then there is the added expense of paying you to come in. And since you are only able to train 4 to 6 people at a time you'd be there at least 136 hours - so they'd have to pay you for your time.
And, in the meantime, the people you haven't trained yet are still fumbling with a new system - so their lost productivity doesn't start going down until they get to be with you.
136 hours is at least 3.4 weeks, so the average wait time to be trained is 1.7 weeks or 68 hours - 68 * 200 employees. Since most of the lost productivity would be made right off the bat, I'd say a good 5-10 hours would be within the first two weeks, (that's about 30 mintues to an hour a day trying to find stuff) so you still have to factor that in.
I don't know how much you charge, so going through all the numbers would be kind of pointless, but you get the idea. Having you come in doesn't eliminate the wasted time.
> So you should make new coutings, to see the profits because of incresed > productivity ;-)
The increased productivity is due to your training, not the switch to OpenOffice.org - they could just as easily invest in a 4 hour training class for the new version of MSO and the productivity boost would be equitiable.
> Apart from these 'exact' considerations: what do employees loose by > talking, surfing the internet, chatting, arguing with the bosses... > In many comps, there's a world to win on many fields. Software only > being one of those.
Of course - but that's a non-sequitor. We're not dicussing ways to save corporations money - we're discussing how much it costs/saved companies to switch to OOo as opposed to upgrading to the latest version of MSO (or whatever other propriatary office suite they have been using).
All things being equal (training for either option, or not training for either option / gossip/surfing time staying the same either way, etc.) - Switching to OpenOffice.org costs more than upgrading to MSO Next.
All of this is short term though - after the initial cost of transfering to OOo, the costs per upgrade decreases geometrically. Since the bulk of the employees would be remaining throughout many of the upgrades, the retraining cost would decrease - as would lost productivity.
The only residual negative difference of having switched to OOo would be the new employees who only knew Word/Excel/Powerpoint/Access. Although some would agrue in the future, less people will be trained program specifically like that, and more would be trained on how to use *a* or *any* spreadsheet, and how to use *a* or *any* word processor/ database/ presenter / etc..... and the difference would be futher decreased when you take into consideration that people can only be trained on the software that is currently available, so they would have to be retrained (or relearn themselves = lost productivity) for each residual upgrade.
In the long run, switching to OOo's cost would grow closer and closer to zero, while the cost of sticking with a pay-per-seat office system would continuously grow.
This is all making one *HUGE* assumption.
That OpenOffice.org still exists the next time a major upgrade is needed. Many open source projects don't last - one of the risks of trusting a group of volunteers. If Sun ever drops its backing of OOo, I doubt OOo would last a year.
-Chad Smith
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