Instant CRM

I think that good ideas should be spread, especially if you plan to build them, so I’m going for an (almost) full disclosure on some of the ideas I’m developing.

Anyhow I don’t think that there will be many readers of this  and it will serve mostly as a reminder to myself.

For instance Here I gave some hint about what I call “instant CRM” which is based around the idea that catching and managing the relationships with customers shoud be easier, efficient and affordable by very small businesses.
It would build heavily on the use of email, as it is the most common means of communication, It would build an history of conversations but at the same time it would make it easy to move them on the web and to organize them around the tasks to be completed.

The system should be able to receive emails generating customer issue pages, probably with issue specific email addresses to followup. People can follow up with email or on the page (adding files via the browser interface or as mail attachments), and the issue can be tracked via email or with RSS (using enclosures to deliver attachments).

8ore

I’ve been thinking for a long time to change the way I’m doing the job of software developer. Currently I’m working for hire as a freelancer and while it’s been a rewarding experience, now I want to try my skills also on the entrepreunial side. I’ll go from a consulting kind of work to a product based business (Even if I’m planning to keep part of my worktime for the freelance business to pay my bills in the meantime).
It has been said many many times how the moment is perfect to start a business with none to a very small amount of financing and I absolutely agree with it. The technology and the services are cheap (and you can shop around the world for them), the tools allow a good software craftsman to build services rapidly and there is at least the possibility to get noticed (even if you are not an A-lister) through the blogsphere if you do or say something remarkable.

What it is strange to me are the examples which are usually given when talking about small startups: most of the so-called web2.0 companies don’t seem to be on the market to make products which can be profitable on themself (they seem to be bulit to flip in the shortest period of time), but this is both nonsense as there are areas where there is a lack of offerings for solutions and an opportunity for someone else to come along with the right product. This will be also a bigger challenge for me since there doesn’t seem to be much innovation, or new services, coming from my own country (Italy).

I have some ideas which I’ll try to get implemented, none of them is particularly innovative neither the problems are hard to solve, yet there’s no simple and easy solution which covers the problem, or the solutions are too large and too heavy to be usable by the small businesses or private users which will be my target. I firmly believe that execution is what counts and this services will be built to be:

• Simple, simple, simple (and clean): users don’t have time to learn how a service is meant to work, so the interface should be clear and self discoverable. Ideally it should take no more than 30 seconds after login to get how to do the basic operations and start to use the service. The services will need to be distilled and the challenge will be to choose what is the essence of the problem beng solved.
• Valuable for the users: the products will solve problems for the users, they will make it easier to do some (common) task or let them save time during their work day. Moreover they’ll be cheap, at least cheap enough for the price to not be a problem in choosing them.
• Unobtrusive: the services will not try to force users to abandoon their behaviours or to leave the software they are used to employ. They will try to build on the unstructured, common gestures which are part of the way we use web today and they will definitely try to catch all the casual interactions which happen continuously on the net (especially while using email).

8ore.com will be the home for this effort but I’ll keep blogging here.

A Technologist Manifesto

Lex I: Corpus omne perseverare in statu suo quiescendi vel movendi uniformiter in directum, nisi quatenus a viribus impressis cogitur statum illum mutare. — in other words, a user at rest would rather stay at rest than do extra work.

This is from one of the most hilarious pieces about the IT world I’ve read, yet It’s one of the most true.

It tells us that technologists are sometimes too much in love with thier technology at the risk of considering the users an hurdle on the road to the product. They are not, without the users there whould be no need for the tools we develop.

disclosure: I worked as the main technologist on an ERP project…

MeasureMap deal

With the amount of posts related to the annouce that google has bought measuremap I still didn’t see a comment about the real value that this deal brings to google.

I think that the acquisition was not for the measure map product alone but rather for the people who built it. Google will be able to use the design expertise of Jeffrey Veen and his collegues to make the interfaces for its services even better (even if i still love the gmail interface).