Are you one of the 15,000 federal managers who received a fax offering you a free copy of financial management software that could avert a year 2000 breakdown in your agency's accounting systems?
Behind the unusual marketing strategy is a small but gutsy Canadian company, FreeBalance Inc. of Ottawa, Ontario. Although the company has yet to get its product approved for use as a core financial system in major federal agencies, FreeBalance is trying to persuade agencies to try its product at no cost or obligation. It's so easy to install and use, CEO Kevin Higgins says, that agencies will be using it within a week after slipping the CD into their PC drives. Target users are not necessarily in agency accounting offices, but in program offices trying to keep track of their budgets and amounts obligated.
Whether or not all his claims prove true, Higgins has a convincing case to make for his company's marketing tactics: Agencies soon will find that they just can't get all their old software ready for the year 2000. In desperation, he says, they will look for off-the-shelf replacements. They won't find packaged software for their program operations--collecting taxes, say, or regulating pollution. So, the argument goes, they will have to install the packaged, year 2000-ready software that is available--administrative applications such as FreeBalance.
Most other federal financial management software systems take two years or more to install, so it's already too late to turn to them as year 2000 saviors, Higgins says.
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