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Food Smart's Approach
to Revolutionizing
the Cost of Ownership
of Nutrition
and Foodservice Management Software
The computer and software industry is full
of stories about how small companies and individuals with a good business
sense have dramatically reduced the cost of owning hardware and software
systems. For some reason, however, the prices of nutrition care and
foodservice management software have remained prohibitively high for many
smaller healthcare facilities (long term care in particular). Prices
of this specialized type of management software are relatively high compared
to software for many other industries and sectors primarily because of
two factors:
-
The cost of maintaining corporate office buildings
and paying full-time support staff.
-
The cost of keeping full-time sales representatives
on the road.
Sasquatch Software Corporation is poised
to change this industry's high-cost sales and support paradigm.
-
They have always had an entrepreneurial commission-based
reseller program for Food Smart that eliminates the high costs associated
with travelling full-time sales representatives. This will continue,
and when Food Smart's web-based version is released later this year, those
who are interested in seeing the capabilities of the new higher
foodservice production and nutrition care management editions before
making the purchase decision will be able to do so through:
-
Short-term temporary access to the web version.
-
Complementary teleconference or web conferencing
walk-through.
This has a considerably lower sales-associated
overhead cost. This is passed along through considerably lower than
industry-standard basic software purchase prices.
The same type of approach, coupled with
high-quality online user documentation and tutorials, will keep the cost
of training down by reducing or eliminating the need for onsite training
and the associated travel expenses.
-
The existing Professional
and lower editions of Food Smart will continue to have free e-mail
based support directly from the developers.
-
Entrepreneurial self-employed dietitians will
provide both lower annual cost e-mail support, as well as higher cost (but
still
affordable compared to current industry standards) same-business-day call-back
telephone support.
-
Facilities in the process of implementing
a new Food Smart 5 installation will probably opt for the higher cost telephone
support option for the first implementation year. After that, the
facility may decide that lower-cost less prompt e-mail support is sufficient.
Responses of the "traditional
big-leaguers" in the nutrition care and foodservice operations software
arena will be interesting to observe as Food Smart 5 and Food Smart Online
are progressively released over the coming months. Food Smart 5 will
be debuted at the California Dietetic Association's conference in March,
and again at the American Dietetic Association's AME in October.
You can also request to be kept informed by e-mail about the progressive
releases of their new management
and web
editions by clicking on the links.
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