Are you at risk with your customers?

Software Magazine, Sept, 1998 by Rick Whiting

Here's another reason to get going on those Year 2000 projects: Your customers might dump you if you don't.

A majority of recently surveyed IT managers said their corporations and government agencies might cease doing business with companies whose IT systems are not Year 2000-ready sometime next year. Several IT managers specifically cited the end of the first quarter of 1999 as a deadline.

The survey of IT managers at 116 corporations and 14 government agencies was conducted by Cap Gemini America LLC, a computer services and business consulting firm that provides tools and services for Year 2000 projects. Fifty percent of the survey respondents said it was "potentially likely "that they would cease doing business with companies that could not guarantee that their IT systems were Year 2000-compliant, while another 5% said it was "likely" that they would stop doing business with such customers.

"Anyone who can't be Year 2000-compliant by the end of the first quarter of 1999 is putting us at risk," said John Ogens, director of Monsanto Co.'s Global Year 2000 program. St. Louis-based Monsanto is a Cap Gemini customer and Ogens was among several IT managers who participated in an August teleconference to announce the survey results.

Several IT managers participating in the conference said they would begin making contingency plans in early 1999 concerning suppliers who were not Year 2000-ready. Ogens said his company might work with critical suppliers to help correct the Year 2000 problem, hut he and others indicated that finding alternative suppliers would be part of those contingency plans.

"The sooner your company can demonstrate that it is Year 2000compliant, the more secure it will be in the market place," said Howard Rubin of Rubin Systems Inc., which conducted the survey for Cap Gemini.