One of our awesome ProWorkflow customers made a mention of ProWorkflow (Project Management Software) in their latest media article. To read the article, click here:
http://www.btob.co.nz/cms/news/2008/01/art10003038.php
I’m always excited to hear customer success stories! I’m also amazed at the large variety of industries gaining productivity benefits from the ProWorkflow software. I guess fundamentally though that most industries use generic principles of projects, tasks and time. ProWorkflow has been designed as a generic PM tool so can adapt to many situations easily. From Crash Brokers to Creatives, to IT co’s or Manufacturers… The solution can create efficiencies!
Here’s a snippet from the article…
“…The “project” is then entered into the on-line system which sends an automated email-alert to the customer advising log-in/password details. Crash Brokers staff update all milestones daily so customers know as soon as insurance assessing is complete, target completion dates, any subsequent updates and other relevant information. Other files and images can also be attached.
Crash Brokers’ Director Karen Knight says a number of software packages were trialled over many months before deciding on Christchurch based ProWorkflow. She says they’re delighted with the functionality and robustness of the system, as well as the unlimited technical support provided by ProWorkFlow’s Director Julian Stone and his staff.
Knight describes ProWorkflow as a first-class product that’s easy to navigate and intuitive to use – it fully supports Crash Brokers objectives of providing a highly efficient professional service that saves customers time, stress and money.”
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About the author:
Julian Stone, CEO – Project Management Software visionary for: ProActiveSoftware.com, ProWorkflow.com & Julian101.com
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For all those who haven’t yet got their heads around the concept of Web2.0 or the social media online culture springing up, here’s a chart to break it all down. This should put the Web2.0 buzzwords in perspective for all!
Technorati Tags: Web2.0,Web 2.0,Chart,Social Networking,Internet Culture,Communities,Social Markers,Tagging,Ranking,Weblog,Search Engines,Rss,Aggregator,Video Sharing,Podcasting,Video Blogs,Vlogs,Wikis,Online Applications,SaaS,Citizen Journalism,User Generated Content,Creative Commons,Social Computing,Directories,Folksonomy,Longtail
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Anyone is welcome to republish this article as free online content, provided that the paragraph below is included in the full form as shown.
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About the editor:
Julian Stone, CEO – Project, Management Software specialist for: ProActiveSoftware.com, ProWorkflow.com & Julian101.com
I just found this article about the size of the SaaS market in New Zealand. Have a quick read as it’s interesting Here’s the article (and the first paragraph)…
Software-as-a-Service Ups Its Game in New Zealand
“Market Expected to Experience 65% Growth in 2007 and Grow to NZ$64 Million by 2010″ – http://www.crm2day.com/news/crm/123334.php
Springboard Research, a leading innovator in the IT Market Research industry, today announced the results of its latest research on the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) market in New Zealand. Increased vendor activity and the inherent appeal of SaaS have been responsible for the market growing 65% in 2007 to NZ$14 million. Together with Australia, New Zealand continued to be the most mature market in the region.
NZ$14 million? That seems a bit on the low side. I would have thought it would have been higher – perhaps double. But 14 million? I’ve known of software co’s in NZ that have been successfully renting software in a SaaS model for years. I also can tell you that we (ProActive Software – www.proworkflow.com – Project Management Software) were never interviewed or asked about our earnings in any survey and that would have added a chunk to the numbers. We’re a dedicated SaaS company! One of the few truly global established SaaS players in NZ. I wonder how many other companies weren’t included in this research? There’s plenty of great SaaS co’s around Wellington as well…
The point of this post? Firstly, that there is an emerging Software as a Service industry in New Zealand, and secondly, whilst interesting numbers and from a seemingly reputable source, never trust a SWAG (Silly Wild Ass Guess) ;-)
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About the author:
Julian Stone, CEO – Project Management Software visionary for: ProActiveSoftware.com, ProWorkflow.com & Julian101.com
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Original Post: Being 37signals for free
http://wisdump.com/business/being-37signals-for-free
After reading this post I felt I should speak my mind a bit in the comments section. They’s discussing how easy it would be to copy BaseCamp’s project Management Software product and offer a free version. I thought I should point out a few things in defence of them, www.ProWorkflow.com and other software providers who are trying to offer value-based solutions in a market flooded with price-driven customers. Here’s my comment:
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“Our solution is called www.ProWorkflow.com – project management software and we have many thousands of users in the 1-100 user level. I can tell you from experience that copying the code and building a similar tool is only a small part of it. Think about 37s’s overheads, back end management systems, networks, marketing commitments (paid and social), security, support, sales, backups, billing, 24/7 requirements, load balancing, monitoring etc. All this comes at a cost to 37s (or in our case, to us).
You’re fooling yourself if you think you can put all that in place and then offer it for free. Serious companies like us and Basecamp & others, put great infrastructure in place to protect customers’ precious data and provide great service offerings.
I see some people in this list complaining about the cost of the service. Remember that it’s a ‘Service’, not a ‘product’. You can easily replicate the product, but to recreate the service requires infrastructure and this comes at a cost.
On the point I said about people complaining on price – wanting free tools… We charge $15 per user per month for ProWorkflow. This amounts to 0.50 cents a day! Small price for efficiency I reckon. To be completely honest, if a company can’t afford 0.50 cents a day to pay for project management software to create efficiencies (and save money/time), then the problem isn’t the cost of the solution (Basecamp, ProWorkflow etc). The real problem is that your business is either not making any money, or you simply don’t think the solution provides value.
Think about this for a sec. Would you rather spend 0.50 cents a day for a robust solution to protect your important data? or for the sake of 0.50 cents, look for a free tool, but run the risk that the solution may let you down, go under, perform badly, not be backed up etc!
How much do you value your business? Some people on this list obviously don’t think their own businesses are worth a few cents a day! Sheesh! ;-)”
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Republishing Note:
Anyone is welcome to republish this article as free online content, provided that the paragraph below is included in the full form as shown.
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About the author:
Julian Stone, CEO – Project Management Software visionary for: ProActiveSoftware.com, ProWorkflow.com & Julian101.com
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We had a sales lead the other ask why our product was better than ‘Product X’ (competitor solution)… I responded with the following points:
1. It’s not better – it’s different!
2. I can’t say as I don’t know your needs yet, let’s talk further.
It got me thinking though. On one hand, we can try to continually redevelop the ProWorkflow project so we “beat” all the competition on the functionality front (development focus). On the other hand we can take time to talk with customers more to better understand their needs (sales focus). Or… We could just press on and spend more time and effort on marketing and drive more leads in the pipe (marketing focus).
So… assuming that you’ll never have a software product 100% right as customers have different needs, that you’ll always need to ‘sell’ to some degree, and that marketing is an ongoing ever changing mission, of these 3 key areas, should you have a primary focus as a company (ie: Sales) or should there be an even 1/3 1/3 1/3 split of time resource and energy?
Often tech companies (Especially Web 2.0 startups) have a strong focus (due to skill bias) in one area but neglect the others. For example, they have a great product and development team, but can’t market or get traffic to the website. Or they can get traffic, and sell, but experience high churn (customer drop-off) because they lack skills in the product design and usability area.
All companies need a balance, and the primary focus may change from company to company, but here’s some thoughts to consider while thinking about your development, sales & marketing.
Development Focus
- Listen to the tone of the customer feedback. Don’t just add features and think ‘Problem solved!’, rather understand the customers real problems and resolve them compassionately with not only a feature focus, but also a usability focus. Realise that real people have to sit down for hours each day to use your software, so consider human interaction when adding feature.
- Always look for ways to improve usability and speed and here’s a good tip for ideas. Don’t make assumptions, talk to the customers who use your software every day.
- Look for ways to reduce technical support (install wizards, setup guides etc) as this will free up developers time to focus on new developments, products or releases.
- Look for ways to reduce user support. Create a searchable, built in knowledgebase for example. Every time a developer (or support staff) answers a support issue, add it to the knowledgebase.
Sales Focus
- Focus and plan your sales funnel! Don’t give equal attention to all sales leads. Have a method or system sort out the hot leads and focus on those.
- When selling, consider the size of the lead you’re selling to. Ie: Don’t spend 3hrs (emails) and 2 hour long teleconferences selling to a $15p/m lead. These leads should sell them self, automated, online. You should choose from the hot leads, the larger companies and spend the most time converting those leads.
- A lot of time is wasted and conversion rates drop when salespeople don’t realize the person who signed up for the demo isn’t the decision maker. So the ‘customer’ seems to be loving the product and one day the deal fizzles! What happened was you were demo’ing to a project manager when you should have been getting buy-in from the CEO. So on the bigger deals, understand who writes the cheques and make sure you work towards getting them in the loop. Sell to the decision maker!
Marketing Focus
- Develop a plan to over time reduce marketing spend, not increase it. This way your revenue can go in to other areas or profit margins. For example, spend time money now on Search Engine Optimization (SEO) which will deliver natural free traffic over time rather than Search Engine Marketing (SEM) which can scale up traffic, but at an increasing cost.
- Develop a strategy to use social networking to your advantage. This could be a community site, viral video, RSS blog feeds etc. As long as you offer something to the audience of value, this will build to more free traffic over time.
- Think of your marketing approach as ‘What can I offer people’ rather than ‘Convincing people to visit me’. Ie: link and point to other people’s sites. Blog about other businesses, write articles to share, talk positively in forums – help people out with solutions. Have an ‘outward’ focus rather than an ‘inward’ focus. It’ll come back to you tenfold.
Those are just some thoughts to get people going. Feel welcome to comment below if you can think of any more considerations ;-)
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Republishing Note:
Anyone is welcome to republish this article as free online content, provided that the paragraph below is included in the full form as shown.
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About the author:
Julian Stone, CEO – Project Management Software visionary for: ProActiveSoftware.com, ProWorkflow.com & Julian101.com
