Autodesk does NOT want you to know this…
I am a representative for a prominent Autodesk reseller, and I am about to tell you about a program administered by Autodesk that they do NOT want you to know about. Giving you this information puts my career in jeopardy. If Autodesk finds out who I am, they will most certainly put an “embargo” on my employer listing me as the culprit in their report and costing my employer thousands of dollars in lost revenue. Why would I take this risk? Because both I and my employer take great pride in our honesty and integrity, and Autodesk’s program forces us to be subversive with our clients. It is my sincere hope that revealing the truth will force Autodesk to rethink what they call the “ACE” program.
Autodesk maintains that the ACE (Autodesk Customer Engagement) program has nothing to do with the price that you pay for their software. The reality… the program can cost you $500 or more per seat of software that you purchase. Here’s how it works.
When a reseller begins working with you, they register a new ACE opportunity and send your personal information to Autodesk along with details of the deal that they are working on. Autodesk then sends you an email under the guise of a customer engagement survey asking you to confirm that you are working with the reseller and that you are happy with your experience so far. The email has two buttons… “YES” or “NO”. Pretty harmless, right? Wrong.
The details vary a bit from reseller to reseller, but here is the bottom line if you are doing business with me. If you click “YES”, I will sell you a seat of AutoCAD Inventor 2010 for $4,795. If you click “NO”, I will sell you that same seat of AutoCAD Inventor 2010 for $5,295. What’s worse is that whether you click “YES”, “NO”, or ignore the “survey” all together, all other resellers cannot sell you the same software for less than $5,295 without dramatically reducing their profit margin.
Basically, by clicking “YES”, you are giving me special pricing from Autodesk that allows me to sell you the software for less without sacrificing my profit margin. Of course, I can’t tell you that, but you will hear me say, “We will get that quote to you as soon as we can. By the way… would you mind responding to that Autodesk survey that they sent you?”
So what is Autodesk’s official stance on the whole thing? Here is an excerpt from the Autodesk ACE Handbook that is distributed to all salespeople at Autodesk authorized resellers.
“Definition of the ACE Program... ACE is designed to provide customers and prospects with a mechanism to provide feedback about their experience throughout the sales consideration process. Any feedback is directed back to you, the reseller, to provide you with crucial information directly from your customer.” – Autodesk ACE Handbook
Just make sure that your feedback is the “YES” button or it may cost you.
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(FROM ANOTHER AUTODESK RESELLER)
ReplyDeleteThe Autodesk Customer Engagement (ACE) Program claims that is designed to drive new 3D software sales and recognize the investment a reseller makes in pre-sales development of those opportunities.
The premise is that Autodesk rewards a “hunting incentive”, which prior to this program was the cost price to ALL resellers, to the reseller that first registers a “deal”. If you are not the registrant, your purchasing cost as a reseller for the product from Autodesk is increased over 50%.
I have great issue with a program that allows Autodesk to embargo me if I were to tell the truth to my customer as to why Autodesk is contacting them (see below-VIOLATIONS). Their email to the customer is very generic. It basically inquires whether or not a customer is working with RESELLER X on a potential opportunity. It says nothing about precluding them from working with other resellers since now no one else can compete with RESELLER X’s price.
Most customers respond to this email “yes”, even if this is not their reseller of choice. A prudent shopper would first contact rival resellers to compare competitive prices and gather ammo to make a knowledgeable and wise decision. In many cases, they approach a reseller they don’t do business with first to gather information - just as one would probably go to several like car dealerships to shop the best price on a particular make and model. If someone asked you if you were working with Auto dealership X, the response regarding any of the dealerships you visited to would likely be yes.
With Autodesk ACE program, only the ACE registered reseller would be able to sell at a price far below their competitors in what I argue is unfair price fixing.
The advantage to Autodesk is that most resellers are not willing to lose a customer; so they purchase for the 50% markup price, sell against the ACE’d reseller’s quote, and lose money- just to maintain their customer base.
This adds a 50% markup to Autodesk’s selling price to the reseller and therefore means millions of additional revenue and profit to Autodesk.
Violations:
Audits will be performed on closed opportunities to verify delivery to the customer of the specific products and quantities of products as were registered as opportunities with the program. If it is determined at any point in the process that there has been any misrepresentation, Autodesk can institute a Customer Engagement Embargo of 15 days or more. During the Customer Engagement Embargo, the offending reseller may not register any new, or close out any existing opportunities in the Autodesk Customer Engagement Portal.
Misrepresentation can include but is not limited to the following activities:
· Registering an opportunity outside of Reseller’s authorized sales territory
· Providing an invalid opportunity registration number to the ABC or distribution partner
· Ordering Hunting Incentive Discount skus for a non-registered customer
· Failing to sell all products ordered with an HID authorization code to the registered customer for a specific opportunity
· Ordering inventory using the Hunting Incentive Discount
· Telling the customer not to reply to another reseller’s verification email
· Trying to unhook another reseller’s registration approval by advocating the customer contacts Autodesk in order to have an approval switched from one reseller to another.
· Deliberately listing incorrect customer contact information (contact name, email address, phone number, address)
· Disclosing Autodesk Customer Engagement program details to a customer- YOU MEAN IF I TELL A CUSTOMER THE TRUTH AUTODESK WILL PUNISH ME????
hello,
ReplyDeletei am independent person working n outsourcing the projects to other city, n people who work for me work on google sketup, the matter is few days before some random guy called me and asking me that u r using autodesk n we are going to audit ur firm, and if you don't want it please buy license form our authorized dealer,
so should i be worried about this ,coz m not personally using the software, so please guide me how to deal with the situation
Nice to know it's a policy they had not just bad salesmanship,
ReplyDeleteThis [as mentioned by samrat] actually happens to me back when I had 3ds Max 2010. @samrat: I think you should just let them audit your site. I did the same. I simply told the rep on the phone that yes, he can visit my site. Nothing much comes of it and no one actually nose around my servers. The only surprise that the rep lifted my installation cap to unlimited ounce they were satisfied. A few years later when later I upgraded to Max 2015, though, I had earned a substantial discount for returning my 2010 perp (or maybe was max 6 - both released from my account. You can never tell. From my experience I got wiser and simply bought more seats of the retail packaged version + online subscription (so no floating license, just unused media.). That eliminates ALL floating licenses, network rendering, or unparented companion licenses to worry about, and then I don't worry.
I could offends some with the ideals of enforcing license to everything they could bring to a render farm, but I did. And I'm glad.
PT. Sarana Solusindo Informatika adalah Partner Autodesk Indonesia yang beralamat di Kedoya Elok Plaza Blok DC-50 Jl. Panjang, Jakarta Barat 11520 Jakarta - Indonesia.
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1. Jual AutoDesk AutoCad 2017
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