by Scott on January 09, 2007
LeadsOnRails.com automates lead management and lets you implement lead followup best practices to convert more leads and free your up more of your time.
This system was born from discussions with small business owners who often spend a fortune on lead acquisition only lose the lead information or fail to effectively followup on it due to poor communication among team members, poor advanced planning, or failure to create a lead management plan.
In LeadsOnRails each prospect is put on a track, which assigns steps to users and everyone can see leads progress through the pipeline. No one is left assuming someone else has taken action. As one of users put it – LeadsOnRails.com can serve as an organization’s best-practices manual.
LeadsOnRails is the first in a series of products aimed at making the dedicated expertise found in large, successful companies accessible to small and mid-size companies that do not have the need for a dedicated IT or marketing staff and do not have local IT staff to support desktops, databases, and networks.
Next up:
- New features including integrated email management and web site interfaces
- Improved help and get started pages (with video tutorials)
- Industry specific templates for leads and workflow
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by Scott on December 13, 2006
Following up on his famous Ruby scaling debate, Joel Spolsky, takes another shot at 37signals and other propenents of simplicity saying that “you sell ‘simple’ as if it were this wonderful thing, when, coincidentally, it is the only thing you have the resources to produce.” Even if it were true (which I do not think it is) that companies selling ‘simple’ do so when they have reached the limits of their capabilities, it would not follow that simplicity is a poor strategy.
Among Joel’s reasons for avoiding ‘simplicity’ as a strategy are that you will be easily copied and that the “weaknesses as strengths” approach is not sustainable.
Low Competitive Barrier to Entry
In believing that you are toast when competitors come in and easily copy a “simple” program, Joel forgets that the software itself is only a small part of a company’s success. This is why you see posts like Code is 5% of your business and 10% of this business, on the outside, happens in the IDE. The other 90% is where you make your money.
For twenty years, software has been a relatively easy business to enter. No one should think they will not have competitors and copycats in this business, no matter how small or large your code base.
Innovation
Joel also discounts the ability to “use your weaknesses as strengths” as a long term strategy. While Joel thinks that is true, I believe that building a company strategy around having more features than the competition does not work in the long run.
I like books that are empirical studies of companies, not authors trying to advance a pre-determined platform. One such book is “Built to Last” by Jim Collins. Among the hundreds of findings in Built to Last, two are especially relevant here.
Collins: Most successful companies do not exist first and foremost to maximize profits.
Collins: Most successful companies do not focus primarily on beating their competition.
My Take
Do not focus on having more features than your competition. Do not add a feature just because you think it might bring in short term profits. You need to primarily consider the potential long-term impacts to customer satisfaction. Customer satisfaction and your ability to produce raving fans for your products has been shown to be negatively impacted over time when a product is more complex.
While Joel seems to discount these findings (and he certainly has more experience running a company than I do), I believe that this approach will work for Synap Software and our customers.
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by Scott on December 08, 2006
I like how the screens are coming together for our new lead tracking application, so I have put a montage of some of the main screens up on the product teaser website.
Click here to see the product site
Click here to log into the demo account. Please provide feedback!
Posted in Productivity
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by Scott on December 01, 2006
In 1978, Harvard Business School and MIT graduate Dan Bricklin joined Bob Frankston to create the world’s first computer spreadsheet program. I was looking through old magazines the other day and came across my July, 1989 issue of Inc. magazine featuring Mr. Bricklin on the cover with an interview inside in which Mr. Bricklin discussed his “prototypical host company of the 80’s” and “reflections on staying small”.
Dan Bricklin’s story has always been one of my favorites, even as a kid in college. And his work and writings (see his site) remain exceptionally relevant today.
With VisiCalc, Mr. Bricklin was able to identify a need, write software to solve the need, and build a company around that software. Bricklin’s story is well known and Visicalc, his creation, is sometimes credited with sparking the personal computer revolution. He really was, I think, the first MicroISV. Even the downside of VisiCalc (being beaten by large rivals on IBM-PCs in the form of Lotus 1-2-3) provides an interesting study in the software business.
But that was over a quarter century ago. Even if it was an early small software company, could his experience then still be relevant to new small software companies today? I think so and VisiCalc, plus dozens of other companies and products, formed the basis for my research into Best Practices for a New Small Software Company.
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by Scott on November 21, 2006
Update: I received an ‘A’ on my Capstone Paper. (My final GPA then is a perfect 4.0).
Just a celebratory post! I turned in my final research paper which marks the end of my work toward my Masters’ Degree at University of Denver. Whew…now all there is to do is wait for the final grade.
Thanks to my wife, Karen, and everyone that supported me through this effort.
My final project was an analysis of business and technology best-practices for new, small software companies. I will be posting portions of it here from time to time so stay tuned for details.
Posted in Productivity, Personal
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