A breakthrough finally….

I have been a little stressed out… more like I’m irritated by a certain company and especially her IT manager who has been pestering us and dumping loads of work on us that was out of our contract scope with them. The initial contact was a trial one, which was supposed to be reviewed and then amended. But that company was so sly that we literally worked for peanuts for them for the past 5 months. Besides not receiving what was due to us, we were getting a lot of complains and negative comments from the users.

I was really pissed because I have been negotiating with the Thailand-based Belgium manager for like eternity to increase the price of the contract. He doesn’t get straight to the point with us on what is stopping him from signing the new contract with us, even though he agrees himself that we need to expand the contract. My colleagues have also been telling me to hold back my comments and not be so straight-forward on my thoughts towards the issue.
There were times I was told to amend my email because it was too straight-forward... grrrr

Initially, we suggested the best and obviously most expensive plan of 2 full-time engineers onsite. This is actually 6 times the price of what the company is paying us now.
However, it was kinda rejected. (They couldn’t swallow their pride to say it was too expensive) and they requested we give their alternatives = cheaper but less efficient plans.
In anyway, even the cheapest plan is like 4 times the price of what they are paying now.
That is also how much they are over-taxing us.

So finally, the regional ( belgium guy )IT manager made time to come to Japan last Friday. Before that, I was really praying hard that this issue will be settled once and for all. That was no way we could continue this life of getting “told off” by customers and not being able to defend ourselves. We really needed a break and move on! In fact we were prepared to already tell the IT manager, if we cannot come to a compromise, we have to call off the deal totally because we are making a loss.

BUT!!!!!

Within half an hour into our meeting, he announced that he actually had a meeting with the management and they have decided to go with plan 1.

Wooh hoh!!! Really praise be to God… Indeed He answers prayers!!

We were all so taken back actually that now we have a slight problem of manpower… because my manager didn’t believe that the 2 person full-time plan will actually work.

The meeting went on for another 2.5 hours but after he left, everyone exchanged high-fives and even the president was beaming from ear to ear.

Despite all the excitement… I quietly creeped back to my seat because I had to catch up on my work in my 2.5 hours absence *sobz* but in my heart, there was really peace and comfort. There was also the motivation to continue my work for that night….
And when I came to my realization, I have been working in the office for the last 12 hours…

Time to go home!