Meet bigWebApps Feb 29 Patrick Clements

Jason 'What Me Worry' Moore - Lead client advocate and creator of Mo' Betta Chili

 

Mike 'Hollywood' Clements - Deal Closer Extraordinaire and King of the Mountains

 

Jon 'In by 10'  Vickers - Master Network Administrator and Ambassador of Russian Affairs

Patrick 'Where are the TPS Reports 'Clements - Grand Poob and Executor of the Fancy Feet

 

Stay tuned for more bigWebApps team members....

He who pays the piper calls the tune Feb 29 Patrick Clements

Well this is exactly what we have been doing for the last 8-9 months.  The bigWebApps team has been tirelessly converting our entire application suite over to .NET in order to keep pace with advancing technologies.  This is just one of these tasks that was long over due and needed to be done.  The only way to do it was just to do it.  It's not fun and at times it became very frustrating because even though we were forward developing the system there was no immediate satisfaction to our engineers or more importantly to our clients.  All new feature changes, functionality improvements, UI upgrades have mostly all been placed on hold in order for us to improve our infrastructure.  But now the time has come and our conversion completion date is set for March 15th.

What does this mean?  It means that bigWebApps now delivers the most mature and advanced on-demand helpdesk solution available.  Development time will be greatly improved and soon with the implementation of our Micajah Common framework we will allow clients the ability to style and customize their own helpdesk solutions.  Great things are on the horizon for the bigWebApps suite and we appreciate everyone's patience while we have been rolling this out.

Never Argue With a Crazy Person... Feb 20 Jason Moore

On-lookers may not be able to distinguish who is whom.

I love this one.

Note:  I believe the original version uses "fool", but I like "crazy person" much more for its visual aspects.

Note2: Here's to the hope that anyone could distinguish me from Manson. :)

The Most Effective Way to Guide Your Decisions Feb 18 Jason Moore

Reading through one of Seth Godin's recent posts about decision making (does anyone tire of Seth?  I don't!), it made me reflect on how we make development decisions at bigWebApps.

I noticed my brain immediately started ticking off the ones that we use from his list...but wait!  Those aren't really the ones we use.  What my brain was building was the list that I would love to use.  So I had to consciously force myself into building the real list.  And it wasn't too bad.  So after spending a few minutes thinking about this from other angles, I came up with 3 lists:

1. The list I would love to use
2. The list that we really use
3. The list that we used in the past

The good news is that list #2 is much closer to #1 than #3.  Progress!  And now that Seth shook the cobwebs off this thought process, hopefully #1 and #2 will soon be equal.

If you haven't already navigated away and are interested in reading my interpretations of bigWebApps' three lists here they are starting at the bottom.

#3 How we made decisions in the past

• It's something a major customer wants
• It's cheap (but never is)
• It's easy (but never is)
• It's important to our community
• It adds a feature that our CTO really wants
• We've come this far and quitting now costs too much (this one is so painful)
• It will increase sells (never as much as you think)
• It's the next logical item

The thing about this list is that it's not really that bad.  It's just too reactive.  The major problem was the way we went about executing the list.

#2 How we currently make decisions

• It's important to our community
• We've come this far and quitting now costs too much (yep, still painful)
• It will increase sells (better execution, hopefully)

The main difference between #2 & #3 is the fact that we have simplified and tried to maintain focus on what is important to our current community.  We also have a few pieces of unfinished projects that need to be wrapped up.  The entire team seems to be on the same page that this will not be the future.

#1 How I would like to see us make decisions

• It's important to our community (using a page from Dell's website for this. very exciting!)
• It will help us serve our community better (this includes more sells)
• It's fun! (new addition, but should be a mainstay for any community-centered business)

So, in the future, if there is a fun project that will either help us serve our community better or is important to the current bigWebApps community, then fire up the wagons!

Setting Priorities For Others Feb 14 Jason Moore

Seth Godin talks about Bad Judgment when not taking a step back and looking at it from the other person's perspective.

Nearly 100% of the time that we discuss how employees and/or clients will choose the priority of a help desk ticket, the person's response is extremely negative.  I would bet Euros to Dollars that I could nail their response with a 85% accuracy rate.

Me: "You can allow your clients to designate the priority of the ticket, and it can be altered by your technicians to better reflect reality once they triage the issue."

Them: "What?  They would choose URGENT every time! <insert self courtesy laugh>"

The problem is that they are right.  But the bigger problem is that their client/employee is probably right as well!

If a teacher can't use a printer for a hand-out, then it is an URGENT matter to get that one (of 200) printer fixed to her.

If your client can't reset his password, then it is URGENT that there is a bug related to the email that is sent when he forgets it.

I was on the phone extremely frustrated with Comcast one day when the revelation occurred.  I'm just as guilty of the over-reaction as our clients, and our client's clients, and so on.

From a customer service perspective, there is no training technique or advice that is more effective than truly imagining yourself in the client's shoes.  Once you do this, knowing how to handle the situation becomes much clearer (edited to remove "easier").

So is it really bad judgment or just situational judgment that dictates our actions?

Would You Like Something On the House? Feb 13 Jason Moore

Sure I would!!

This was the question asked of me yesterday when I was at Pei Wei, the Asian diner.  The interesting part of being asked this question was when it was asked.  This question is not shocking after a restaurant or server gets everything wrong.

But I was asked this after a very attentive employee happily took my take-out order in a very professional and efficient manner.  After finishing my order and handing over my receipt she asked, "Would like anything on the house to drink while you wait?"

I won't repeat my answer here.

What did this act cost Pei Wei?  Let's give it $0.20 for cup and soda.

What did they get in return? Well, this blog post.  I put their number in my cell phone, so I can more easily remember them when looking for a lunch spot.  And I will certainly tell this story a dozen or so times at a minimum.

And from a business perspective, congratulations to everyone who was in on the process of allowing this to happen.  Was it the brand manager, store manager, that one employee?  Who knows?  All I know is that it worked!!

There is ZERO replacement for outstanding and unusual customer service.

Active Directory Guinea Pig Feb 13 Jason Moore

We are in final stages of beta testing the Active Directory integration into bigWebDesk.  The final step will be to set up a test db of bigWebDesk and set it up to run a test on a client's Active Directory setup.

If you are interested in volunteering for this, please contact me at jason.moore@bigwebapps.com or call at 866.996.1200 x 702.  I will send you over the full questionnaire and info document.  This should answer most/all of your questions

Our AD Replicator is read-only.

Your help is greatly appreciated!!

"Citizen Marketers" for Educators; Free Feb 11 Jason Moore

   One of the concepts that we discuss with our education clients is to change the mindset of their team/district and look at what they are doing in a more corporate way.  The main focus of our talks in this manner is to start looking at the teachers, professors, and staff as "customers" instead of simply viewing them as co-workers who submit trouble requests.

It appears that Ben O'Connell has some of the same feelings.  I posted a review on this book about a year ago.  Ben is offering to share the knowledge in his book with educators for free.

Check out how you can use these concepts to further your educating prowess.

Company Culture Feb 11 Patrick Clements

I participated in an event last night I found highly enlightening.   It was called ‘Family Reunion’ and it is the annual international conference for all the employees of Keller Williams Realty.  Everyone there was either dressed in costume (i.e. the Incredibles, clown outfits, full fatigues, boxing champions, etc.) or were displaying some type of pride for the region they were located with hats or signage.  (Texan’s reeeeeally love their state!)  It was a pretty energy charged event with everyone showing their enthusiasm for working for Keller Williams.  The company culture was written all over the walls.  People loved working there and loved working with the each other.  The results are evident as well in its growth rate.  Keller Williams has grown from 7,400 agents in 1998 to over 75,000 agents in 2008.  This is attributed to not just their unique business model, but in large part based on their company’s culture, driven from the top from their founder Gary Keller and their CEO Mo Anderson.  At the event, market centers from all over the country were invited to put on entertainment and skits, which were spoofs about working with Keller Williams.  However, the main event was when Gary and Mo took the stage. 

Gary wailed on a Stratocaster and Mo, who is 72, strummed the keys to some old classics rock and the entire crowd of 3,000+ loved it.  Mo then later calmed the crowd to almost a dead silence and let the agents and her staff know how truly important they were to her and what they meant to the company. 

I don’t think you can fake a company culture.  Company culture is born from the individuals who steer the ship.  There are many ways to attract new talent to your organization; growth in an exciting industry, financial rewards, or prestige of the company, but ultimately it will be the culture that retains.  Each company has a personality and it’s a reflection of the founders and management team who are driving the vision.  If your company's main goal is to be profit driven then ultimately money is the incentivisor.  This is great when you are in ‘high on the hog’ times, but if things begin to stall or the market becomes unfavorable then your company culture is built on a weak foundation.  Profits won’t be the only thing you will lose. 

bigWebApps is built on customer loyalty and product innovation.  We love our customers and we love building better web technologies to improve operational processes.  This is evident in our core management team and it is evident in all decision making.  We look to continue expanding on these qualities as bigWebApps heads into the future.  Maybe even one of these days I will even learn to play the guitar.

Platform as a Service Feb 07 Patrick Clements

bigWebApps has been developing customized and leasable web-hosted solutions way back when ASP was a cool term and nobody had even heard of 'SaaS' (Software as a Service) or 'On-Demand' solutions.  We embraced this model as the future of software - low acquisition costs, single code base lowering support requests, flexible architecture, high adoption, low risk...etc.  It appears now the software industry is evolving once again and this is due in large part to Salesforce.com, one of the recognized leaders in SaaS solutions.  There is a recent article in February's edition of eWeek with CEO Marc Benioff discussing 'Cloud Cover' and the evolution from software installed on a computer living under your desk to a service that now lives on the web and operates as a platform. 

What Salesforce.com does well is it has focused its strength in being able to effectively manage customer data to leveraging this success and improving the community as a whole.  In essence they have now built a platform model (PaaS – Platform as a Service) around their solutions which invites and drives participation from their partners and clients.  This is the future of software.  With the increase in web services, APIs, and open source technology ISVs need to realize that software is a living organism and success relies on the adoption and participation of the community.  Gone are the days where a software company can crank out compiled code, burn it to a CD and then sit back and watch retail sales go up as they plan on developing their next release.  Software development needs to be fast, flexible, and unique to each customer needs.  Organizations don’t want an 80% workable solution - they want 100%.  Establishing the core application and building a platform around this will now at least get you a ticket to the new game.

What bigWebApps does well is management of service requests and assets.  We have built our solutions with the idea that organizations need a few basic tools (i.e. A CRM solution, an accounting solution, a time and billing solution, if you are a personal service firm, and a customer support solution).  We focus on being the industry’s best in managing and resolving customer support issues.   We are now looking to incorporate our community and research ways to evolve....stay tuned as this will be exciting new times for bigWebApps.