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Suppliers Going Out Of Business: What Now? - Ep 284
656 Plays8 months ago
As we scrambled for a topic this week, we all realized that we were having issues with companies going out of business. Whether buying screens, running radiocarbon samples, or upgrading computer programs, we found that some businesses that we used for years were closing. What do you do after that happens? The obvious answer is find a new supplier, but sometimes it’s not that easy…
Transcripts
For rough transcripts of this episode go to https://www.archpodnet.com/crmarchpodcast/284
Blogs and Resources:
- Bill White: Succinct Research
- Doug Rocks-MacQueen: Doug’s Archaeology
- Chris Webster: DIGTECH LLC
- Andrew Kinkella Kinkella Teaches Archaeology (Youtube) Blog: Kinkella Teaches Archaeology
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Transcript
Introduction to CRM Archaeology Podcast
00:00:01
Speaker
You're listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network. This is the Serum Archaeology Podcast. It's the show where we pull back the veil of cultural resources management archaeology and discuss the issues that everyone is concerned about. Welcome to the podcast.
Introducing the Hosts
00:00:22
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the CRM archaeology podcast episode two hundred and eighty four. And I am your host today, Andrew Kinkela, and I am joined by Doug.
00:00:37
Speaker
And I'm also joined by Heather. Hi, everyone. Look at that. A bunch of happy
Challenges with Supplier Closures
00:00:43
Speaker
people here. I think we're going to talk about, you know, right before we started this show, we were kind of going back and forth that we actually do this a lot like, OK, what are we going to talk about today? Sometimes we have a really focused succinct plan and other days are like today. But you know, what's great is there's always kind of something.
00:01:01
Speaker
like an experience we might have had recently. And we kind of all came together on the topic of what to do when your suppliers go out of business, right? So maybe it's tools, maybe it's screens that you've bought for decades from one place that you really like, and then suddenly they go out of business. Maybe it's carbon 14 dates from a group that you've used, and then all of a sudden they're going out of business, right? Maybe it's computer programs or apps, this kind of thing.
00:01:28
Speaker
And what to do? Are there any work arounds? What have we heard that other people do to sort of maintain their supplies? And I thought I would go first and then we'll open it up because this is an experience that I had recently. There's a carbon 14 dating company called Direct AMS, and many of you listening may know them. They came about, oh, maybe the better part of a decade ago, maybe a bit less.
00:01:56
Speaker
And when I saw their prices, this was sort of word of mouth like, oh, hey, Andrew, you should have your sample sent to direct AMS right there, this company in Washington state.
00:02:07
Speaker
and their prices were really competitive. I was like, wow, this is great. I started sending my samples to them and everything was a happy world. I'd send my samples, I'd get the dates back. These also were AMS dates that were basically the same price as regular old-school carbon-14 dating.
00:02:31
Speaker
you would get these AMS dates, which are better than the classic style for a really great deal. Right. So I just switched everything over in a semester.
00:02:44
Speaker
And a couple of months ago, though, I started to kind of not hear from them. And then I got an email saying, oh, we're so sorry to tell you that Direct AMS is shutting down, you know, and I'm like, oh, no, because sure, there are other carbon 14 dating companies out there, but.
00:03:04
Speaker
For me in this point in the academic world, that means I have to shuffle a ton of stuff behind the scenes in order to get money to the new company because what happens in the academic world is I have to kind of earmark money months, if not years beforehand to pay for
00:03:25
Speaker
kinds of things like carbon 14 days. So the money is all sent in its special box being signed off by every dean and manager that says, OK, you can pay direct AMS. What happens when there's no more direct AMS? So you have to kind of find a new company, which I have, and sort of put them into the system and basically kind of hope that
00:03:49
Speaker
You can get the money re earmarked and try and re earmark money in a bureaucracy. Good luck. And at the same time, while you're remarking the money, there's also a time limit. And actually, for me, the time limit, I believe, is March. We're recording this on February 25th.
00:04:09
Speaker
where if you don't spend the money in a certain time, they also take it away. So I am in a quandary of quandaries. I feel bad for direct AMS and I will say they were very honest, right? Some companies just leave or you just sort of hear from them less and they sort of fade. So direct AMS was being very professional and honest about what was happening. It's just a bummer and difficult for me. And I know a lot of other people have had those kind of experiences. Heather, what's up? How's how are you doing in terms of this stuff? I am.
00:04:36
Speaker
shedding many tears I have and I still am at the loss of direct AMS. They were great. In my experience and never did it fail, they were responsive, they were quick, they were business minded, very professional in how they handle things. They were awesome. They followed through on everything. I never had one issue, not one.
00:05:01
Speaker
And then on top of that, they were reasonable in their prices. Yes, maybe. And I don't know, you know, the business model, maybe they were too reasonable. That's my thinking. But it's sad because I mean, it's very expensive equipment. I think most people that are listening would realize that. And so maybe
00:05:24
Speaker
you know, the updating of some of the equipment that obviously is going to have to occur over, I think they were in business for a little over a decade. Right. Yeah. It sounds about right to me. And so maybe, you know, the cost of updating their equipment may have been just too much. I don't know. I want to say I feel it. I feel like I heard that
00:05:45
Speaker
they'd mentioned that something broke or something and it was prohibitively expensive, but I could be wrong. It is so, it's just so sad to me. It is what it is. And so we got to move past it, but it's sad. And, you know, I've noticed that there's some really good business people in the discipline of archeology and in the services that surround archeology.
University Restrictions on Testing
00:06:08
Speaker
There are some, but there aren't many.
00:06:11
Speaker
And there's a lot of attitudes that it's, you know what, I have you over a barrel and so I'm going to get it to you when I get it to you. There's no concept that your customer has clients that they need to answer to and projects they need to finish on a certain timeline. There's no concept of that for some, in some services that archeologists need to use. And it's extremely frustrating, but direct AMS understood that. I think part
00:06:41
Speaker
other problem and I don't know if you know I know that that's the issue because you know I have been looking at other labs and I have had to use other labs for other reasons and there is a movement now right that a lot of these labs are located within universities.
00:07:00
Speaker
And it's not looked at in some states, you can't do it at all. And as a whole, universities now are rethinking the idea of whether or not they're going to do any testing on archaeological remains that come from Native American sites.
00:07:18
Speaker
And so now you have these universities that are putting these blanket prohibitions on taking any kind of material from a Native American site. And I know this is, every time we mention this kind of stuff, we get responses from places, you know, from European countries. They're like, what?
00:07:39
Speaker
Yeah, but this now it's a big problem because now we can't do studies on on certain and these are sometimes, you know, especially with Native American sites. I mean, you already have tribal involvement. Yes. There's this stop and prohibition. There's no they don't even think about it. They're not there's no consideration whatsoever. So now you can't do this analysis. Now what do you do?
00:08:05
Speaker
Right. So that's my experience, too. So often the tribe wants to know, too, you know, and but then there's just this blanket law. Yeah, it's it's so it's so unfortunate. One other just positive thing I would say about direct AMS that just came into my mind as we were talking is direct AMS would give you.
00:08:24
Speaker
Everything you need and nothing you didn't. You know what I mean? Like in terms of when you get the dates back, so you have all these choices, you know, and they would just automatically give you the basics, which I loved because most the other places, they just give you everything and they charge accordingly. Right. And you're like, no explanation. Right. Right. No explanation. They got to that. Right. Yeah.
00:08:48
Speaker
And you're like, I don't need the percentage of cobalt in this sample, you know, like just just the date, please. And but they just kind of turn on their system and then, you know, charge you basically double. So that was one other thing I really appreciated. It was really kind of a pure business model. At least it seemed that way to me. It's great. Yeah. But so now, you know.
00:09:10
Speaker
What do we do? What do archaeologists do now? I mean, everybody's scrambling. They're going. There are places that are still around. They are nearly three times the price. Yep. Sometimes more. And so now what do you do with budgets?
00:09:26
Speaker
So this is, and we don't, we don't need to, I mean, this could be a whole other subject, but just to answer that one question, this is why assumptions in a budget are very important. Oh yeah. That's a great one. Yeah. See for me, I just simply do fewer samples. I'm like, Oh, well, you know, and sometimes, sometimes you can do that in, let's say,
00:09:48
Speaker
in a CRM world, you may have a stipulation in the mitigation measure that requires so many dates that are, or so many specimens are processed. So that's, you know, you can't like, you know, pull your hair out and say the world is over. I mean, that's where you have to get creative. Wait, you can't I, oh man, that was a bad choice on my part. Apocalypse. Yeah. That explains a lot.
00:10:20
Speaker
You know, talk to the agency. There's different things that you can do to, you know, go around. And sometimes you have to eat it because if you haven't put in those assumptions, that's why assumptions in a proposal to cover yourself. And there's definitely some
00:10:40
Speaker
you know, some broad assumptions that you can use in order to cover yourself in a situation like this. And you know what? Sometimes you just don't know that you need that assumption until it happens and it bites you in the butt. And you know, you don't do that again. Yeah.
00:10:56
Speaker
Perfect example. I didn't even think of that. Yeah, it's like that the budgetary leave yourself some space. Perfect example. So, hey, you know, I think that's a natural place to just sort of bring this to a close. When we return, Doug has some penetrating insights on what to do when your suppliers go out of business. See you in a minute.
00:11:22
Speaker
Welcome back to the CRM Archaeology Podcast, episode 284. And we have been talking about what to do when your suppliers go out of business, because it often happens kind of in the moment and you are not ready for it. So Heather and I had talked in segment one, and I know that Doug had some stuff that he would like to add. Well, Andrew, you really played up what I was going to say to be much, much more insightful than it will be. It better be great.
00:11:50
Speaker
So I was actually thinking about how, so it's a slightly different in the UK and that you have different legal reasons in other places around the world. There's a lot more work done for private sector development. I mean, you still get that in the state and stuff, but there's a much larger range of what we call archaeological consultants. So these are people who will basically be hired by a
00:12:15
Speaker
construction firm and engineering firm, possibly bricklayer. Without getting into a lot of details, principal contractor is this huge thing in the UK. But whoever that principal contractor is, they'll usually hire archaeologists or they'll hire an archaeologist to advise them and tell them what they're getting and what services they need to buy. And then they get quotes back, the consultant will say, yeah, these are good, these are bad.
00:12:41
Speaker
yada, yada, but you, you sort of end up talking to consultants or sort of the larger consultants and they happen to work for some of the large engineering firms, which actually a lot of the same large engineering firms that we have over here are the same, same you'd have in the States. Like as a paratec, they just bought someone, you know, I'm trying to think of, of course, I'm now going to go blank, but it doesn't really matter. But you talk to these guys and it's how they manage their.
00:13:10
Speaker
They're archeologists, they're actual contractors where we sort of divide archeology into consultants and then contractors. And then obviously you have your government archeologists who eventually have to see the final sign off and checking and stuff like that. And how they tend to do it is they like to keep sort of a
00:13:31
Speaker
mouge-bouche of potential contractors working for them or undertaking projects. For small projects, they may not actually go with the cheapest company. They may go with maybe a mid-most expensive one or maybe even the most expensive one and spread out their work.
00:13:53
Speaker
that they always know that they have a good couple, but usually by default for tendering, you usually want at least three tenders. Government contracts usually require at least three tenders and stuff like that. So they might keep a good three or four, maybe five, maybe more contractors who they regularly work with.
00:14:12
Speaker
And they sort of spread out the work. And so it becomes essentially more about risk management instead of price necessarily. This goes back to the whole, I think we talked about this months ago, about not getting a contract. And I think I'd mentioned this is that sometimes there's other considerations other than being the cheapest
00:14:32
Speaker
out there. And so this happens in America too. There's on call contracts basically, but they've whittled it down to a few vendors. Yep. Yeah. And they, and they usually like to keep a couple of vendors and they throw work to different vendors just to keep them going. So they always have, they always have options. Right. I think that's, that's sort of one way that people end up sort of managing that risk of, of your,
00:15:01
Speaker
Whoever it is, whoever your supplier is, yeah, you sort of rotate around and that way you always have a backup.
00:15:12
Speaker
And that's what they were. A third is the price of everyone else. It was measurably cheaper. It depends again, you know, without getting too far in the weeds of, you know, what you want, what you don't. But it was it depends on what you're testing.
Software Challenges in Archaeology
00:15:26
Speaker
Yeah. And what you're doing. But I would say it was at least it was a nice like like 60 percent cheaper, like easily, you know.
00:15:35
Speaker
Yeah, it was amazingly cheaper. When I first heard about it, I was like, what? You must be kidding. I can't get that. People wouldn't believe me. When I introduced them to direct AMS, people are like, what? There's no way that's that price like it is. If anyone from that company is listening, apologies for this, but it does seem like if you're that much cheaper, you probably don't have much of a reserve. And if something goes wrong, then yeah, you'll go out of business.
00:16:03
Speaker
Yeah, but they've been around for over 10 years. So I think what happened, and again, this is just speculation that if other, their competitors just kept going up and they kept, they kept saying, okay, we were good here. Like these prices are good. I saw a gap expanding. Now this could just be my imagination. I didn't really continue to watch the market carefully.
00:16:28
Speaker
Yeah, I didn't either. You know, I was seeing when people come to me and I would say you should use direct AMS, they would come to me and say, this is what so and so is charging me. And it seemed like that gap was getting wider. So I think that direct AMS just did not continue to increase their prices where these other companies did. And maybe they they did increase their prices. They did do that, but they weren't doing it at the same level. And because they looked at
00:16:57
Speaker
They looked at their bottom line. We don't know why they left the business. Really. So if there could be other reasons, could have nothing to do with the fiscal side of things. So anyway, there's, there's, there are at a university, I think they were at a university actually. So it could have something to do with that. So, so anyway, we don't know what it is. Right. So that service I was thinking about, like, it's not quite software, but you do end up with that sort of loss leader.
00:17:27
Speaker
People will give out software for years and years for free to basically drive their competition out of business. And then you end up with only one software that does what you needed to do. And then that's a lot harder to sort of move vendors around, especially, so, you know, something like a trial, like relatively speaking, there's differences between trials and how they're made and, you know, if they're forged or if they're welded together and the quality and stuff like that.
00:17:56
Speaker
For the most part, there's not huge barriers of use. Maybe slightly different sizes, your hand can adapt, whatever. But software, there's usually an investment of actually learning the ins and outs of a software. I think that's a lot harder for archaeologists to switch and move between and to be more careful. You really can't do that whole idea of like,
00:18:20
Speaker
Oh, let's have three different suppliers or four or five that we keep passing stuff through. Because it's such a huge cost of learning and using three different types of GIS software is really hard. And then, yeah, you sort of end up, especially with software, with one.
00:18:39
Speaker
There's the one that has, you know, 80 or 90% of the markets and then a couple of other people like that. I think that's a lot harder. I'm thinking, so from my background, you know, GIS. So in terms of commercial, I mean, I'm not sure if there's anyone else out there in commercial other than Esri these days. I know that there was some smaller ones back in the day, but they essentially either go Esri for, you know, a commercial
00:19:07
Speaker
setup for GIS, some really tiny small ones that at any point go out of business. And then you basically end up with open source, you know, QGIS and grass. And well, so actually I mainly use, they pretty much Esri helped kill off, not kill off, but kept the support.
00:19:26
Speaker
of grass from the federal government. And so you can now use grass as like a plugin inside QGIS, but that's kind of, you're almost down to choices when it comes to GIS. I mean, there's a bunch of choices.
00:19:40
Speaker
Don't get me wrong, but realistically, the two big ones are QGIS and Esri. Right. And that's been my experience totally. But I would say I've totally gone the QGIS route. And this is coming from somebody again in an academic world where I could, if I really wanted
00:19:57
Speaker
You know, put money aside just like for the carbon 14 days, but money aside like ear market for Esri. But I have to say over the years, Esri's prices have gotten so insane that I'm like, I'm not going to buy this for this. You know, I find that QGIS does everything I absolutely need. And I.
00:20:17
Speaker
It's one of those things where Esri has really left a bad taste in my mouth because it's one of those things that feels like Microsoft, you know, where they hook you and then just keep pushing the prices up and up and up. And I'm like, no, I don't need all these functions and all this whatever, you know, and they'll try and make you scared like, oh, QGIS, it's open source. Who knows? It's like, no, no, it's fine and it works great. So it's funny because in a way, it's like I wish Esri the best, but I
00:20:45
Speaker
don't at the same time because of their business practices. So I'm kind of totally QGIS for the win. So there are times when companies go too far in that we are trying to be the overlord. And I feel like Esri totally has. Part of that also is like, so for listeners, you have to be real careful about going open source in that open source projects, for the most part, depending on the scale, need to have some sort of business plan.
00:21:14
Speaker
And so like QGIS, the reason it's become the dominant one is because there's actually a bunch of different smaller companies that essentially sell development and work on packages attached to QGIS or the development and stuff like that.
00:21:31
Speaker
business model that can keep that open source software program, you know, the project, if it's, you know, some projects might have multiple programs, whatever.
Support for Open-Source Projects
00:21:41
Speaker
Yeah, I think one thing that if you're going down that route of open source,
00:21:46
Speaker
don't necessarily think you can zero out your budget and think about donating. Instead of giving like, okay, maybe if you switch from Esri to QGIS, okay, yeah, maybe you take 25% off or 50% off of your budget there, but then find a way to donate that money. I mean, a lot of those open source projects allow you to donate or become sponsors. So that's a big thing now is some very successful ones who'll have
00:22:12
Speaker
gold, silver, platinum, diamond level sponsors who give significant, I've seen some open source projects with like, you know, 10,000, 100,000, like the top level. And these are like large companies that do that. They just, they give.
00:22:29
Speaker
portion of it, which is very hard to justify in some companies, some organizations, because they'll be like, wait, we can just beat this money and everyone else benefit. We're not getting something that gives us a competitive edge, yada, yada, yada. But it is something that you should really consider about if you do go down to open sources, figuring out ways to either give back to the community or to donate. Because I'm thinking of like,
00:22:54
Speaker
software that was open source. I'm thinking of RTI, which we talked about, reflectance, transformation, imaging, for anyone who's not aware. Basically, you take a bunch of different pictures with different light angles and then you can put them all into a software and you can
00:23:15
Speaker
in the software change the lighting direction. And it's amazing for like, say, stonework or, you know, rock arts or, um, tombstones, stuff like that, where you might have a very light bits of writing or a lot of weathering that sort of removed a lot of image. You can change the light on that and sort of figure out what's happening. Um, and there used to be an open source, a software that sort of did that, which was RTI builder. And that was from the cultural heritage imaging, which they're a nonprofit.
00:23:46
Speaker
But I think the last time they released a new version might have been like 2010, 2008, maybe 2006. And it got to a point where basically there used to be the
00:24:03
Speaker
a lot of forums of like, Oh, I have windows 10. How, how, how can I make it? It's not working. And then like, you'd have to get really technical, you know, changing code on your computer, doing it as an admin and running it by command line, all this sort of stuff to try to make it last forever. Yeah. Recently, like they've, they've, they've just said the discontinuer cause it, you know, there's a cost there's definitely open source. There's a cost and people's time.
00:24:33
Speaker
And so there's a new one that's out there, Relight, which I think was University of Pisa in Italy, ended up creating it. And basically after 10 years and when the other open source one just didn't do it, I think they created a different one. But yeah, you have to be real careful with open source and make sure that there's actually some sort of business model that will keep that project going. That will keep you being able to like, actually, I know that's probably applicable to all your suppliers.
00:25:02
Speaker
It's a lot harder to tell because you don't have their accounts and whatever, but if you have suppliers who are charging
00:25:11
Speaker
a tenth of what all their competitors are. There's a good chance at some point, either one, they're doing that to capture the market and then at some point they're going to hike all their prices and you're going to have vendor lock in and be screwed or they might go out of business. They just don't have any running capital. You know, your story there, I totally agree. And it reminded me of something from my own past and that I'll talk about when we come back for segment three. See you guys in a minute.
00:25:42
Speaker
Welcome back to the CRM archaeology podcast episode 284. And we have been talking about what to do when your suppliers all of a sudden go out of business. And what Doug was talking about in the last segment reminded me of a couple other times where this totally happened to me. One of them, there was a program called GPS Trackmaker, and I think it still exists, but it was open source. What it does is it's just a program where you can download
00:26:12
Speaker
all your GPS points and basically produce a map. It was very basic, but I'm telling you, it was so much better than the Garmin stuff. And it's really sad because it's like when you buy Garmin GPS units, you would get free copies of the Garmin programs and stuff. But I found the Garmin programs so crappy and just so they were so focused for hikers in a way that you couldn't
00:26:39
Speaker
use them to put in like free form GPS points in order to kind of do the types of things that we need in archaeology. But this like free open source GPS trackmaker thing was huge. It saved me. I remember my master's thesis. That's how long ago. But you could you could download base maps to it. It was fantastic. I believe it still exists. But that was one kind of like Doug was saying, where I was I was always worried. And I think there were
00:27:05
Speaker
times when they didn't update it for a really long time. Another one, there was, I guess I should say, unfortunately, I'll have to use the term was, an app for your phone that did Munsell colors. And that was so great because the Munsell book is obviously so expensive. And yes, I know that Munsell colors on a screen, on an iPhone aren't, you know, supremely, absolutely, utterly perfect.
00:27:29
Speaker
But they're good enough for a lot, a lot of times. And there was this app, I swear it was probably made by a student, very basic, but worked great, but it hasn't been updated. And we know that the app store can be very fickle when you have no updates. They finally just shut it off and that's what happened. So there's two other stories of WO for me. Heather, I know you had some stuff to build on that, so
00:27:53
Speaker
So, I did first of all want to correct the record now, as far as direct AMS. This was just, you know, guessing on our part. And so I direct AMS was it actually was an independent business unit of a company called Acium.
00:28:09
Speaker
biosciences. And that company was, they provided like micro tracing data for preclinical and clinical pharmaceutical studies. So they were a separate company. So we don't know what it is, you know, maybe think things happen in the business world, right? Profits aren't high enough and they just make a decision. But anyway, if, if anybody that worked at direct AMS is listening, we really appreciated you. We thought you were terrific. And
00:28:38
Speaker
And we're sad. Hopefully you have some neat things ahead of you, some neat opportunities ahead of you. And actually, if you're ever interested in being a guest on Sierra podcast, let us know. We'd love to talk to you. Totally. What a great idea. Yeah.
00:28:56
Speaker
So, you know, I just wanted to, I know that on the social media, you know, this has been a topic. There are just a few companies that create some of the tools that we need. As archaeologists, we're lucky because as archaeologists, there's so much of what we use can be bought at any hardware store. But there are some specific tools that we use that
00:29:22
Speaker
can be made by hand, but you also do have the time to do that. I mean, there's so much, you know, that's always a struggle. It's been a struggle for me throughout my career is that there's, I'm a definitely a DIYer.
00:29:35
Speaker
Hey, I mean, I love it. I love doing and doing things exactly the way I want to do them and creating my own stuff. I do that in archaeology and outside of archaeology. But you only have so much time in your day. And so purchasing a tool that somebody has worked really hard to perfect and to do very well is valuable. And we should support companies like that as professionals, especially if we have any control over the buying.
00:30:04
Speaker
of a company. But recently there's been some challenges. I think it started in COVID, whereas people started making their own tools and screens and stuff. But now we're coming across some challenges because with the way the market is, we're all so, so busy. We don't have the time to create screens. And if we need new screens, it's becoming increasingly difficult to get them.
00:30:27
Speaker
And so when companies go out of business and there's so few that make these, I shouldn't even say go out of business, but are not able to provide at the demands that people have timing wise, then it definitely makes it difficult. And yeah, I think this for me, in a general sense, first of all, you have to be creative.
00:30:50
Speaker
We can't sit back and just say, okay, we can't do this because this is what happens is that it starts trickling down the line. Like how many times have you went and you need a service and that service is let's say based in a university and I'm not to pick on universities. We do pick on them a lot. Oh, but you should.
00:31:09
Speaker
But there's this bureaucracy, as you say, but it's also this mindset. You know what? We don't have time. We cannot meet your demand and therefore we're just going to sit on our hands and we'll do it at our pace. We're not even going to pick it up a little bit. We're just going to do it at our pace.
00:31:27
Speaker
Look, I need to spend time making a trial using a Marxist approach. Okay. That's really what matters is my feelings. Yeah. So I don't know what you're talking about. I don't. Yeah. Obviously behind the times, but you sure are.
00:31:45
Speaker
So that is where we get these stopgaps, where we get these places where we can't move forward. And as a discipline, we need to get out of that mindset. I do understand that people are coming to you demanding. You have to maybe unrealistic demands. That's one thing.
00:32:03
Speaker
But if we sit back and we're like, you know what, you're going to get it when you get it. Eventually somebody else, that's the free market is going to come in and say, you know what, I can provide it for you. And in the time that you want.
00:32:18
Speaker
And then you're going to be out of luck. So, you know, one frustration and we've talked about it is the Chris data system and some of the information centers have caught up and others have not.
Issues with California CRIS System
00:32:33
Speaker
And it makes this is in California where you have all the archaeological site records and reports and we don't have a choice. This is the only place we can get them as professionals working in California.
00:32:43
Speaker
And so it is so difficult. I cannot tell you how many times I have conversations with project managers outside of archaeology or customers where I'm like, listen, I don't know what to tell you, but they say they're backed up three months. What? That concept does not make any sense to anybody outside of our discipline. And I actually don't blame them because it shouldn't make sense. It doesn't make sense. But they're kind of holding the cards and we're stuck.
00:33:12
Speaker
And so Heather, it totally makes sense because you need to take time making those maps using a structural functionalist approach. OK, so I can't. It's just it's people like you who just who just won't won't do the readings. You won't do the readings.
00:33:30
Speaker
I was never good at that. You're actually so... Yeah, exactly. No, man, I can't agree with you more. I can't stand it. It's so unprofessional. I'm like, how hard is this really? We have to make this harder on everyone. I can't agree with you more. And you can hear it in my voice. It just, it pisses me off because it's been this way for like decades. You know what I mean? It's like nothing now.
00:33:52
Speaker
I think and I've said, you know, we've talked about this. We've kind of gone back and forth on it on several different episodes.
Business Approach in Archaeology
00:33:58
Speaker
But, you know, this is where I really think that as a discipline, we need to not be running away from the business side of things. And there are some companies that are that are saying that we're, you know what, we're going to look at this as a business.
00:34:14
Speaker
And there's nothing wrong with that. There's balance in life, right? Doesn't have to all go that one direction. And, you know, those businesses that are doing that right now that are looking those CRM companies that are doing that right now that are are looking at it in a much more business sense are doing very well right now. They're also coming under fire by a lot of people. You'll want to hate on them for that reason. But this is a sign, right, to those that are coming up in the business.
00:34:44
Speaker
in the discipline of archaeology that you really are going to have to have a business mind if you want to make it in in CRM. Absolutely. And you've been saying this for a while. You have to. You can't have this idea that, you know, you're going to get it when you get it. That's not how business works.
00:35:02
Speaker
Yeah. And don't fall for this false approach of like somehow if you're in academia, having a business mindset is somehow dirty. You know, I can't stand that. And that runs rampant in the academic world. I would say I get what you guys are saying. I totally agree. I would say there has to be sometimes a little bit. I think we need to sort of possibly add some asterisks to like a business mind.
00:35:28
Speaker
In the sense that one way of doing a business is actually, yeah, you're the Google, you're the Facebook or Microsoft or whatever, or if you're in GIS, Esri, in which you basically
00:35:42
Speaker
It makes really good business sense to create a monopoly and then just soak everyone for every last dollar or yen or pound or euro that they have. But we're talking about two extremes here. It doesn't have to be that way. There's a more balanced. Let's just start thinking about business. Let's just start having people in CRM programs taking business classes so that they at least understand the business side of things.
00:36:10
Speaker
But instead of only focusing on or having a large percentage of the classes being on theory and a lot of theory that really doesn't apply. Now, do we want to lose that theoretical background? No, we don't. But there needs to be balance. There also needs to be business classes. Yeah, I think it's just worth sort of expanding to say that when we're talking about business, it's we can even just rephrase it to business for sustainability, as in
00:36:41
Speaker
You could do a lot of interesting things in archaeology, but you do need some money. You need a way of being able to put food on the table. When we're talking about business sense for anyone, I know how this is going to go on social media. Someone's going to be like,
00:36:57
Speaker
They're all wanting us to be soulless monsters. It's not that. And I could care less what they say on social media. Well, you know what? That's why there's a problem because they don't even know what the word business means. No idea. They're just bitching.
00:37:13
Speaker
Well, I must say all charities need to basically be able to stay sustainable to meet their charitable aims. Absolutely. When we say businesses, I should also say, business could be you working for yourself. You don't need to be wherever you're self-inc, incorporated, be in charge of several hundred people, this big, massive business. You could just be yourself.
00:37:40
Speaker
maybe you just do a four day work week, you know, maybe you spend half your time doing projects that are your own research interests, whatever. But you're able to do that because you're able to be sustainable through business practices. So I just add that sort of like, asterisks on that business sense is like, when we're talking about business, we're not necessarily saying you have to become the McDonald's of archaeology. Right. Well, so business is, they are definitely people.
00:38:09
Speaker
People are thinking that way. How do we know that people are thinking that way from a financial perspective?
00:38:15
Speaker
because they complain a lot about not making enough money on these social media sites, right? So obviously they are thinking somewhat on the business side of things, right? Maybe they don't know how to think in that way, or they're not thinking clearly in that way. I'm not saying all, I mean, but some. So you can't tell me, we're not all doing this for nothing, right? We're not all volunteering as archaeologists,
00:38:43
Speaker
So obviously there is a business side of things. People just need to look at it more clearly. That's all. And I think the arguments are emotional arguments in many, many senses. And when you come from some from when you're trying to solve a problem with an emotional argument, it's very difficult to solve the problem. Absolutely. And, you know, I think on that note, I think I think we're all good.
00:39:09
Speaker
I think we've kind of wrapped it up with a bow. Look at that. Look at that. Congratulations to all of us. So I just like to thank everyone for listening yet again. I'm going to get to work on my Marxist trial, which I'm sure will be the wrong size and not work. And with that, we'll see you guys next time. And please leave notes. I mean, listen, this is this is just the beginning of the conversation. So as much as I might regret it later,
00:39:39
Speaker
Please comment. Please respond to this podcast. I'm actually very interested to hear what people have to say.
00:39:47
Speaker
I am too, totally. I think it's really interesting and a lot of fun. I would hurt that, and this is not just that generic comments, whatever you get at the end of a YouTube video. Oh, mine was, though. You really are. Oh, okay. Well, after Andrew, the rest of us, it actually would be ... Because this is something about how to be a sustainable business, is having sustainable suppliers. I was just discussing about what I know.
00:40:14
Speaker
Risk sharing and moving around but there might be other ways and people maybe do it differently And I would love to know because you know, I help run a business I help run a charity and they both need to be sustainable. So yes, please do if you if you have thoughts on like how to manage supplier risk Please do share Definitely. All right. And with that we'll see you guys next time
00:40:44
Speaker
That's it for another episode of the CRM Archaeology Podcast. Links to some of the items mentioned on the show are in the show notes for this podcast, which can be found at www.arcpodnet.com slash CRMARC Podcast. Please comment and share anywhere you see the show. If you'd like us to answer a question on a future episode, email us. Use the contact form on the website or just email chris at archaeologypodcastnetwork.com.
00:41:05
Speaker
Support the show and the network at arcpodnet.com slash members. Get some swag and extra content while you're there. Send us show suggestions and interview suggestions. We want this to be a resource for field technicians everywhere, and we want to know what you want to know about. Thanks to everyone for joining me this week. Thanks also to the listeners for tuning in, and we'll see you in the field. Goodbye. Goodbye. Goodbye. See you later.
00:41:33
Speaker
This episode was produced by Chris Webster from his RV traveling the United States, Tristan Boyle in Scotland, DigTech LLC, Cultural Media, and the Archaeology Podcast Network, and was edited by Rachel Rodin. This has been a presentation of the Archaeology Podcast Network. Visit us on the web for show notes and other podcasts at www.archapodnet.com. Contact us at chris at archaeologypodcastnetwork.com.