Cancellation procedure words of wisdom

Bloggers Note: Today's words of wisdom deal with cancellations. Having the auditors of a Silicon Valley Bank explain what constitutes a "cancellation" little g.e. decided he had better send out his words of wisdom dealing with the fact that some clients had been billed a year after they had cancelled.

"Team

Please follow the process for cancellations as given below diligently. Do not deviate from this. Our cancellations will be around 15% this year and we have to keep a close watch on it. Further, accounting is not authorized to deal with support issues or client complaints. If they come across a client using that as a means for not paying bills or otherwise not meeting commitments, the issue has to be escalated to the proper business head and not responded to.

All, I need process compliance from accounting. This is becoming a point of failure for the organization.
We will not be forwarding cancellation notices to India office mindlessly as we have been doing in the past. Here is the process on receipt of a cancellation from a client:

1. Do a client account analysis with the following information:
a. Date of first billing
b. Amount billed to date
c. Amount collected to date
d. Bills that are currently due along with list of bills
e. Amount of final bill as per the contract. The bill is not raised at this point, until we have negotiated and closed the contract with the client.
f. Stop billing template.
2. Write a short note on the account and enclose bill copies, contract, cancellation notice etc and send to the business head. This will be done by the accounts manager responsible for that division.
3. Business head will take action on this and get back within 7 days on final billing, negotiated amount etc.
Regds
little g.e."

That's not bad. After being in business for seven years the President finally came up with a billing cancellation policy. In the world of his denial, if you don't address the problem, it may go away. I doubt it.

And now, on with the story….

While pressure was mounting financially due to client cancellations that were increasing little g.e. didn't know how to resolve the problems. Having signed a new lease before the company's other space was sublet made for a much greater than normal negative cash flow. On to of this, the money man his brother Sonny was losing patience and financial backing was becoming scarce. To make matters worse, the media company little g.e. purchased was not the answer the Denver based newspaper company was looking for and we were beginning to get threats from the newspaper division that clients would soon be cancelling their contracts with Fire M since the company couldn't deliver that product either.

The Vice President of the media division, Mick Mattdonald had been advising little g.e. from the first day of the acquisition that support needed to be healthier and that the customer service department which was the foundation of the media company could not be dissolved.

"Don't tell me how to sell my products, Mick, I am the greatest sales person this company has ever seen. I built empires in India. I know more than anyone. I will run this company the way I want and if you know what's good for you, you will obey me," said the narcisistic President. "And make sure that you do all your development in India. I don't care if it adds three weeks to the delivery date. The clients are stupid anyway," little g.e. added.

With more balls in the air than a practice session just before a Detroit Piston's game little g.e. had begun to crack. His demeanor was changing; he was becoming more sarcastic, rude and foolish while clients, employees and even the company receptionist knew that the problems stemmed from product deficiency and lack of customer support. One of the company's major weaknesses was to attempt to develop products under the cheap tactics of the president and not understanding why the products never made it to market without glitches.

One of the tagline excuses the company constantly used to fend off complaints from the sales department- usually delivered by the head engineer in charge of development - was that "nobody ever launches a product on time…" Ironically, little g.e. is so bad in his business practices that he not only couldn't launch a product that he developed on time, he would actually buy companies that were launching on time and ruin them – almost over night.

But the cheapness that continuously contributes to the failure of the company and its product line, never affected the Mercedes driving, booze chugging, Toblerone munching, self appointed playboy, little g.e. A night out with the self anointed mini stud was like an episode out of a 1980's Fern bar sitcom. With his canned lines of chatter directed towards women who he considered prey, the little guy was pathetic. At one tavern in town his name sits on a board above the bar because he paid for, and drank a $300.00 shot of Tequila. One evening, after an afternoon of drinking shots out of a $50.00 bottle of rum he decided to attempt to proposition a waitress at a Sausalito Chinese restaurant. With more guts than most of his employees he was persuaded to F*&% off. Fortunately for the waitress, his cheapness was not picking up the tab or leaving the tip.

Traits such as these and the power that he was given by being born into the upper level of the caste system have all contributed to the downfall of his company and product line. At one point in a product development meeting the Chairman of the Board, asked when he would be delivering a certain product and little g.e. lied to his face knowing that neither the product nor the marketing campaign to back it up would be delivered by the date suggested.

While little g.e. was attempting to find investors, he was also fighting the sexual harassment battles that were surfacing from actions of his sales manager. The company's policy manual was a work of contradictory art and the company's outsourced HR company had it hands more full than the sales manager and The Co Founder. It seemed like weekly notifications by female employees who were either forced out of the company or ran like hell after words of wisdom from management were presented in one pathetic form or another. Attempts by some members of management to pursue inter office affairs were water cooler fodder. And while the expense accounts of travelling management soared – usually in first class- support dwindled, profits became more distant, the training program had stalled and the Pebble Beach golf tournament cancellation caused some hard feelings between clients, golfers, and one attendee who claimed, " I knew the cheap bastard would never pull off Pebble Beach. It was just another one of his scams…"

Tomorrow: The Toyota Corporate Dinner... Let's talk training…