Shield Financial – Vendor
According to me, I think that the most important issue in this case is that Dog is already committed to Primary Software because he paid $12,000 to the company in order to be the first to have access at the new software and a little analysis of the case shows that Doug seems well implied in this purchase. Indeed, we can clearly see Doug’s motives. The most important is a task motive (Productivity) with this willing to increase the efficiency within the company and between the departments. Furthermore, I consider that the both companies (Primary and All-bright) do not propose the same product because in this field, the patents are quite strict so the two products seems to be different, my digression’s goal is to highlight that Doug has already done year-end sales projections based on the use of this new software.
We can also see that Doug bought items and other products linked to this software: laptops for the sales force. With all of these facts I think that the best things to do is to wait for primary to complete the job because there are too many risks if he chooses to go with the All-Bright offer despite the fact that the offer seems more attractive for the company.
One other thing is that All-Bright offer is to complete the project within two months whereas Primary offer completion had fallen behind the schedule (at least three month), the difference between could seems important but with all the money allocated to this software it is more hazardous to change at the last moment. Last but not least, if I was Doug I will not trust this “coincidentally” call from a competitor of Primary because Doug should know that in the sales field, salesperson will do anything to get a commitment from a client and despite the promises, I think it is not a good idea to take that risk.
Doug does not seem to have a lot of option on this one. Beside the choice of switching with the competitor Doug could cancelled the deal and lost the $12,000 unrecoverable.