Aloha Dealer Network

[posrescue]

I have been hearing that Aloha is squashing it's dealer network and will soon be opening "corporate" offices in several major markets.
Anyone have the skinny on this? If this is true what might the end effect be for the restaurant user?
Any info appreciated!

 

[AkamaiAloha]

I don't know if this is true or not. At first thought, this seems silly. The overwhelming trend in POS software is for the developers to sell and support clients within their local market, until they expand to the point where supporting clients nationwide is no longer prudent or worth the effort. At this time, they outsource their channels of distribution to value added resellers. Aloha has always monopolized the sales and service on the larger chains, but left the rest to their dealers.

On second thought, some of the older farts in the business (such as myself) might recall that Radiant did do this once before. When they bought 20/20 (a decent system for it's time, made worse by Radiant, IMO), they didn't waste much time in cutting off their dealers, taking all the support and sales for themselves--a move that killed the product (again, my opinion).


In terms of the impact on the Restaurant owners, I can tell you in terms of 20/20, it was not positive. I was actually working for a company that sold 20/20--I got hired right after this happened, and the restaurant owners suffer as a result of a lack of local service. The dealers understandably devoted their time to new ventures, and Radiant could provide personal services they required. How many of us have gotten good, personalized service from big companies? Well, let me think for second---the phone company, the cable company, utility companies, HP, Dell--yep, they all SUCK.

If this is true, my sympathies go out to the all dealers and the guys on this board who worked hard over the years to get Aloha the brand recognition is has today.

 

[AkamaiAloha2]

Bo, Adam (or any others working for Aloha dealers)...????

What's the word on this? It's been all over the food service blogs that restaurant owners are getting letters saying they are slowly but surely replaced their dealers with Radiant's own support. Is this true? Are you guys scheduled to be dismantled?

 

[DTSMAN]

No.
They are still having their TechFest this year, which is a big training conference for the dealers and we're going.

Can you post a link to some of these blogs that say this?

Bo

Kentucky phone support-
"Mash the Kentrol key and hit scape."