World Surveillance Group Inc (fka WSGI)

[Danielle-]

crash...

It reminds me of my early years in my first management position while at Merrill Lynch in the 1980s. About 2 years into my first high level mgt position in a large firm, we were tasked, as a department, to consider swapping out our current technology, for some replacement software because of a change in direction from the CIO. One of my managers and his department was tasked with the evaluation of vendors, which finally, after many months of evaluations, presentations, etc., came down to 3 finalists.

We chose and recommended the finalist with the lowest cost and clearly better product. A week later I found out that my new Senior VP had joined the firm, who happened to be the former COO of one of the companies, whose product we rejected (it was the most costly and lease customer base...in fact, it was a challenge to find any of their customers who would say anything positive about them) was my new boss. He asked us about where we were with our product evaluation and our decision. After much discussion, many meetings, emails, conference calls, re-evaluation process of products, etc....We stood our ground on the evaluation and recommendation (while receiving much pressure from "senior mgt", the rejected vendor, and colleagues in other departments...most of my peers had thought, at the time, that it was "political suicide" to go against this new SVP and his "vested interest" in our choice of product).

To make a long story short....we ended up buying both products....the more costly and least functional product "we put on the shelf" and became a reference client...we used the other product in reality. Six months after that, the vendor, whose company we had rejected, but whose product we shelved, discontinued their specific product line anyway.

Such is life in business...it taught me a valuable lesson.