Luck Helps or My E-procurement Software Installation Story I have extensive functional procurement and supply management experience. This attribute attracted an e-procurement software company to hire me as a sales representative and software installer. I went through a rigorous software boot camp and went to my first installation client. I was obviously very nervous and wanted to make sure that the client was satisfied with my performance and that the software installation went well. The client was a software company also but not in supply management. This was the equivalent of installing plumbing in a plumber’s house! They were highly critical of the capabilities of our e-procurement software and its limitations. I soon had a long punch list of aspects of our software that they were not satisfied with or wanted improved. Being new to the company I diligently sent every one of their requests up the chain to corporate development. I also made sure by phone call that development completely understood their request. The night before go live day I received the software installation disks from corporate. Much to my surprise the installation disk were version 6.0 and the client had only paid for version 5.0, I could not get anyone to give me any direction on what to do, and with the deadline fast approaching so I decided to install version 6.0. As I went through the testing I was relieved that the new software was up and running and stable. It had passed all the benchmark tests. I however was not looking forward to the meeting with the client the next day. I was sure that they would find even more issues that they wanted improved. I started the meeting and before I could get into the training plan, one of my client’s harshest critics spoke up, “Mr. DePaoli I want to commend you. I signed onto the software very early this morning and checked all the punch list issues that we had talked about and they were fixed. I apologize for being so critical of you and your company.” Although I was more shocked than him about these circumstances, I remained composed and just replied, “Great! I stayed up all night modifying the software to solve those issues.” What was amazing was that I said it convincingly and with a straight face. What had happened was that like a good soldier I had sent all these issues to development using the system required, and they had incorporated them directly into version 6.0 as a fix or as an option. Our client was ecstatic and within three months the client requested to upgrade to version 7.0. They specifically asked for me to personally install it. Luckily I was already involved in another major project and our vice president of sales assigned another installer to them that he said that I specifically recommended for them. They remained loyal customers for many years. Contact Dr. Tom = thomasdepaoli@yahoo.com drtombooks.com for newsletter sign up https://drtombooks.com/contact/ My Books link: https://www.amazon.com/Tom-DePaoli/e/B003XSV1IQ