Hastings Research


Date: Thu, 11 Jan 2001 02:36:13 EST


Mr. Rod Welch
rowelch@attglobal.net
The Welch Company
440 Davis Court #1602
San Francisco, CA 94111 2496

Subject:   Follow Up of Follow Up/1-10-01

1-10-01

Hi Rod,

Thank you very much for letter of January 6, 2001. We appreciate the kind words about Hastings Research.

[ Rod Welch wrote on January 6, 2001... ]

From the work you and Nicholas have done on the DKR project, it is evident your ideas on KM, particularly marketing, are important, so I would like to have the meeting you propose.

We are accorded a unique perspective on the ongoing work with OHS/KM, and we try to apply it to practical benefit.

[ Rod Welch wrote on January 6, 2001... ]

Launching a business relationship begins with exploratory meetings that result in a proposal by the consultant to provide services and deliverables. While I am sure your consultation fee is very reasonable, my sense is we should follow accepted practice. If KM is to forge a new market, getting started on the ground floor provides a powerful advantage that will be valuable to those who do the initial work, as we are contemplating. This requires taking mutual risks to get started, where each party pays for its own time during project lauch.

Sorry for the misunderstanding. We thought that you were interested in having us work on your web site, as was indicated in your first letter, and responded accordingly. We did not realize that you wanted to talk about joint product development.

[ Rod Welch wrote on December 23, 2000... ]

A professional web site developed by Hastings might engender stronger belief that encourages people to perform knowledge management.

As consultants, we are paid for our knowledge. Our clients expect a high level of expertise from us, and we provide it. It is both time consuming and expensive to maintain this level of expertise, but this is what separates us from those who deal merely in information. Hastings Research can actually apply this information in the form of knowledge. In this way, it is useful, and not just accumulated trivia. You yourself seemed to understand and apply this concept, hence the following diary entry from your site:

Rod Welch SDS record on December 17, 2000... ] 


201461 - Matt asks Is there some way to get a demo. version or user
201462 - documentation that describes the usage of the product. ref DRT 1 US6M
201463 -
201464 -     Matt is welcome to visit our office for a demonstration, or I am
201465 -     willing to visit Wegener to demonstrate SDS for $1,500.

In addition, a trip to the peninsula involves considerable travel time for us. This is why we spent so much time in phone conferencing with you, to cover as many of the preliminaries as possible, and prepare us to start work for you immediately.

As you can see by our client list, our contacts are quite diverse, and the pool of knowledge that we draw from is vast. I think it is fair to say that we show up to work, and not to do dog and pony shows.

I say all this simply to clear up any confusion about our billing policies. In point of fact, due to your association with OHS and the regard in which Doug holds you, we actually quoted you a rate of only about 33% that of our normal initial consult. So while I appreciate your viewpoint, these are the terms that we work with.

Thanks, Rod, and we look forward to hearing from you!

Sincerely,

---Sheldon

Sheldon Brahms
SNighthawk@aol.com