Just to reiterate on a comment made in Dan’s recent post “the past few weeks have been typically eventful and interesting in the life of our little start-up Woosabi” - It sure has! Our great little product is now in Public Beta which effectively means its in the hands of ‘real people’.

My biggest concern as a designer is not the expected “Don’t break it!”, some may be surprised to learn that a good creative education teaches you not to be sentimental about your work. Great product design be it software or hardwrae is not about carving into a static block but about shaping a moving object. (If it helps just think how many generations of iPod we’ve seen, and still to come) And this is why we need this Public Beta so we can properly test and scale all aspect of the product so we get it as perfect as possible for each stage of it’s development.

“yeeHa!”

The largest hurdle for us as now is making sure our product is accessible to users with out asking them to migrate from their prefered web browser or install anything new. In a perfect world, yes, we’d all be using one browser and said browser would work with all the sites that we browse. The real world, however, is diametrically opposed to the perfect world. Divergent Web standards create compatibility problems with many site/browser combinations and it’s utterly frustrating to say the least.

We built Woosabi to work with what we consider to be one of the safest and more functional browsers; Firefox. However we don’t want to dictate anything to our users, it’s just not how we want to do things. So, we’re busy trying to make sure ‘browser preference’ doesn’t get in the way of you getting to experience and help shape Woosabi.

We’re not going to make a big ’song and dance’ about supporting a new browser but what we would “love” is forpeople to signup for their FREE Woosabi account and just tell us how they are getting on using their account with their chosen browser.

Yet another interesting article from Forrester.com

http://www.forrester.com/Research/Document/Excerpt/0,7211,44115,00.html

In summary - my view - acceptable, workable, usable CRM systems a must!! for Business users; CRM must……….

be easy on the eye but different (nice design problem for you designer crew out there!)

be understandable immediately - what goes where, what does what and how

be fit for purpose - just get the job done

be flexible enough for New Start Ups to grow and develop to multi-user CRM

We surveyed 74 business and technology decision-makers and influencers to discover their strengths and weaknesses compared to 15 customer relationship management (CRM) technology infrastructure best practices. We found that adopting best practices is a major challenge for many organizations. About one-third say their customer-facing applications lack an intuitive look and feel and easy navigation. Nearly 40% give a similar poor evaluation to their customer-facing applications not being highly configurable. And more than 40% evaluate their applications as poor/below average in terms of strong workflow capability. Robust customer-facing processes are impossible to design and implement without a sound technology infrastructure.

This weekend (5th + 6th April 2008) sees a potentially great time for Welsh Sport in 2008 (not to mention Welsh Rugby’s National Team - 6 Nations!!). Saturday, Swansea AFC go for the divisional title, Cardiff City AFC steam towards FA Cup success once again (hadda mention 1927 agin din I..sorry you Swans!) and Sunday The Ospreys and The Blues take on the might of England and France respectively in rugby’s Heineken Cup.

Now, I realise there’s already enough pressure on the teams…but just remember, success on the field can mean massive rewards off it by keeping your customers (Fans) satisfied - a form of good Customer Relationship Management (CRM); and you know what they say about good CRM? It’s good for business and can lead to increased sales and profits!

No pressure then boys……………….the best of luck

http://www.ireland.com/search/?rm=listresults&filter=datedesc&keywords=crm

(…) at last SageCRM.com, the software-as-a-service version of the popular customer relationship management software, is now available in Ireland. Although built and managed by the Sage Global team in Dublin (…) p

Published: Fri 01 February 2008 - The Irish Times - Finance

Athough based in Wales, UK - with a name like O’Sullivan, I still have a “soft spot” for the Emerald Isle! But I think anyone who takes the stereo typical “soft spot” view of Ireland and of its people and economy is definitely looking through “sentimental, rose-tinted glasses”.

The investment by SageCRM.com in Ireland not only shows the Irish awareness of the importance of ICT (esp CRM) to its economy, it also demonstrates that the Irish Govt (http://www.entemp.ie/enterprise/stateaid/regional.htm) encourages ICT investment in a way, it could be argued, that is more positively aggressive and enticing for potential and new SMEs (covering most, if not all, of the bases required by new start ups) than most political regional development programmes based in the UK. Is it any wonder that the Irish are leading the way in ICT and CRM (saas)…vive la Celtic Tiger!!

Ellis P left details of this www ranking site; I have been looking at it with a critical Woo Eye. Have you noticed that with regard to Small Businesses - key words/phrases such CRM, New Start Ups - feature very little (if at all) versus the phrase “Contact Management”….are we missing a PR-WWW-Ranking trick by not featuring CM in our PR?

The very welcome and confidence boosting quote from University of Ireland-Galway below regarding woosabi.com’s sister company, InPractice and its Relationship Management software, should be a real fillip for all concerned with the development of woosabi.com Customer Relationship Management Software programme. The successful “Engine” running the InPractice Healthcare & Educational placements throughout the UK and Ireland (soon Sydney + Vancouver??!!??) is the the basis of the the woosabi.com business model for its Customer Relationship Management (CRM) “Engine” software……………………..

…………..Great news for InPractice = Great news for woosabi.com

Following the development and implementation of the application, Lorraine Kent from the National University of Ireland, Galway, said: “The new InPractice online application is fantastic! It was great to see the placement database up and running so quickly . It’s already saving time and confusion. It only took a little while to become proficient with the software and its versatility and ease of use is a joy! Best of all we are able to provide new levels of professionalism for our placement providers and students”

As of this week I’ve been using Woosabi to run my main job’s affairs (www.inpractice.org) and the three things Woosabi does that will benefit it are:

• Sorting an horrendous amount of email
• Automatically invoicing clients every month (fixed fee work)
• Keeping track of the jobs I need to do (and reminding me to do them!)
• Being able to do this on the move (I hate being at a client site and not being able to access email and invoice info - especially if it’s a long day there)

So I took the leap and became the second full beta client for Woosabi, which means if it loses anything I’m in big trouble.

I’ve got a job to do

How’s it doing then?

Awesome! I just logged onto my Woosabi account in a coffee shop to find 4 clients have new invoices waiting to go out (monthly fixed fee items) as it’s March 1st, their billing date. It might be nice to have a simple way to email them these now so I can cut down the amount trees cut down in the name of invoicing

From city to city

I also get a lot of email. My inbox from the past night, which consists of backup files, automated batch job reports, personal email and spam has been nicely filtered for me. What Woosabi has done is group all these by the sender, which allows me to go into my contact view, and see only their email.

Wouldn’t it be great to read an email that’s a request for work and turn it from an email into an actual job of work that would be recorded later for invoicing? Welcome to Woosabi.

All in all, it’s looking and feeling very solid and I’m starting to feel incredibly proud of our efforts.

An exercise in CRM?

In the last few days I have been managing the leads, supplied by www.businessinfocus.co.uk Cardiff office, for our woosabi.com beta test programme; although an “almost ideal candidate” for the woosab.com product per se, www.cisscoassociates.com are not the ideal beta testers for woosabi!! (bit of a boo hoo here from me…I am easily upset you know!)

Why CisscoAssoc not right?… you may ask….the simple reason? Cissco Associates have their own web, e mail and IP support/supplier (possibly not giving the required CRM as they are looking for a provider of a CRM package); however, for the woosabi.com beta programme, it is essential that beta testers can set up their systems/businesses using the complete woosabi.com CRM programme. For sound commercial reasons (all Cissco Assoc Mktng/PR implemented + on a roll) Cissco Assoc not able to link fully with the beta programme.

I had the potentially unpleasant duty of informing Andrew of Cissco Associates of this fact….his response? Very professional and pleased that Woosabi.com communicated the detail to him. Furthermore, Andrew wants woosabi.com to keep in touch with its development programme as it could well be that Cissco Associates might well become a potential user of the www.woosabi.com CRM Management software system.

It could be argued: woosabi.com + cisscoassociates.com = an exercise in effective CRM

Just reading Eds blog again (50 Tricks to get things done quicker), I see one of the features included in the ”Golden Rule” —”do unto others as you would have done to you”— continues on my recent “reflection theme”. In R Branson’s activities for success in his book, Screw it Let’s Do It! isn’t it interesting that even the “great man” appears to relate to the Golden Rule with one or two of his own golden rules of success:   i) Consider the implications of your actions on others  ii) Do no harm 

In business, as in life, the approach of “do no harm” should be pretty well the upermost in an organisation’s priority list. I wonder how many companies profess to have the “do no harm” philosophy/culture in theory…but find it hard to put into working reality. Can you think of any CRM company that fits into the “Say doesn’t Equal Do” bracket (don’t publish it yet, lawyers + all that stuff!!)? Woosabi.com CRM, in its theory and reality, MUST fit into the “SAY = DO” bracket of the “do no harm” philosophy.

This afternoon’s development update brings you a nice little movie so grab a drink and see Woosabi:Email in action.

Wouldn’t it be nice if you could…

See and fetch attachments without having to click into an email

Automatically link your email to your contacts

Automatically update your contacts ‘activity’ details when you receive email

Welcome to Woosabi.

Full size movie here