When new doesn't work....

I believe I've witnessed something very interesting- and I think we may see more of it in the future.

I'm talking about regressive technology. This is where you buy something new, to replace something old, that in the end is actually worse.

Case in point-

We recently moved to a brand new office with a brand new telephone system. The office is wonderful- nearly double the space and much nicer than our old office. So far so good.

It also came with a brand new phone system. This means that your computer and phone work together, so that you can see the last 100 calls you received, which ones you missed, and which ones went to voicemail- all on your computer screen.

Sounds great? I thought so too. Except the voicemail is terrible. In fact- it sucks.

Our old system was almost 10 years old. Yet, you could rewind messages, slow them down, even speed them up. If you called voice mail from your own phone, it knew it was you so all you had to do was type in a password. You could delete messages in one key stroke. It was fast and simple.

Well- the 'new, advanced' one is a little different.

• It's slower to retrieve messages. There's pauses between messages that should be instantaneous.
• It literally has a bug- when you are finished getting the last message, it goes into an infinite loop, and you need to hang up and call back to do anything else.
• You can't fast forward. You can't slow it down (especially useful for fast talkers). It's nearly impossible to forward it to anyone- there's no automatic help to say "To forward, press 1".
• If you delete it, it's gone forever - POOF - even if done accidentally.
• The first part of the message lists the incoming phone number and time in date- in long drawn out simulated computer talk- before the message begins. Yet another time waster.

It literally blows my mind that we can take such a backward step in something as simple as voicemail, that it got me thinking- New technology is not always better. We really should have done due diligence before accepting our fate, because I'm pretty sure that while frustrating, we are probably going to accept our fate and do nothing.

Sigh.

It's the same thing with Fundraising Software. Through the years I've witnessed countless companies try to rush in with new technology that actually doesn't hold a candle to what it replaced.

Web 2.0 may fall into that category. While we are certainly in the process of developing new tools, we aren't jumping into the deep end and forgetting our base product. In fact, the fundraising market has been littered with the corpses of companies that introduced new technology that was inferior to what they already had!

For those of us that wore bell-bottoms when we were kids, this included FundMaster, and more recently, Campagne Associates' Alchemy product. Both were eventually killed and sold off.

I'm determined more than ever not to repeat their mistakes. As they say, "those that don't learn from History are doomed to repeat it".

We'll be deliberate, yet pursue those technologies that make sense for us and our customers. You'll be seeing it soon- with our upgrade to Version 9 of DonorPerfect nearly complete, and a brand new initiative that will rock the fundraising world- quite literally.

Stay tuned.

:)