Know-How Exchange : Strategy

Luigi,

OK, I downloaded the software and have played with it. Yes, it's undefinable. It's not a contact database like Microsoft's Business Contact Manager. It's not a CRM database. It's not a productivity tool or task manager. You can use it to organize your thoughts, but it's deeper than that.

I think the hardest thing to categorize is what it organizes. Calling them "events" is a bit confusing. I think of events as conferences, symposiums, conventions, book signings, etc. Calling all of the activities you can track "events" sounds like one of the software guys' labels. "In C++ I will call this an "event object.'" Psychology people would call these "personal interactions," but that doesn't sound right to me either. A sales guy might call these "customer touches." But this limits it to use by sales. It has diary and jounal capability, but "diary" sounds like a product for a teenage girl and "journal" sounds like something your therapist prescribes. What this is....it's the notebook I carry with me always. I write down records of phone calls, meeting - including meeting minutes, face to face discussions....but I call that my notebook. When coupled with Outlook's calendar and task manager, the most common term for what people carry around with them is an "organizer or planner." Outlook has a tremendous weakness in being a true organizer because of the pieces missing you add. Your front end can give us a true organizer. There's a few pieces of functionality missing to be able to do this, however. I'll detail them at the end. I believe the first thing you should do is list all of the activities you are organizing in front of a bunch of real people (potential customers) and brainstorm what to call them.

As far as a value proposition...if this is positioned as "an organizer" then I think that you can tout the advantages as follows (these are productivity, efficiency, convenience):
1) You don't have to carry around that "extra" notebook
2) Organized such that you can do searches quickly and find something. I don't know how many times I flipped through my notebooks looking for the log entry I entered.
3) Linked to people/companies, etc. You can review what has been accomplished which is an aid to:
a) weekly/monthly reports
b) planning for the future
c) recognizing patterns and drawing conclusions

In short, if you think about the alternatives people have today and the burdens those present which you remedy, those are your benefits.

So, now, for features:
1) I like the "event blog" however, I don't like that I have to enter the name by hand. A pulldown derived from Outlook's contacts database would be beneficial. I can't rememeber spellings of names and might enter a typo
2) Some standard templates might ne nice. For instance, for meeting notes, having a way to pull down names of attendees (and then those you want to copy on the minutes as you publish them), a section for the agenda (which can be built ahead of time and sent out to the attendees - which you can have a checkbox next to their names to include them as present...something like that), a place for summary of discussion (maybe under each agenda topic), conclusions, and actions (with a spot for WHO is responsible - again, with a pulldown from the contact list, WHEN it's due (and wouldn't it be nice if this appeared on the person's task list as a "thing to do?"). How about a phone call planner - when, who, what I want to talk about...there are examples available for sales people, etc on phone call plans. How about an employee coaching session - where you are telling them about something they did wrong, what they need to do to correct it, when you will follow up, etc?
3) Ability to tie "events" not just to "people" but also to tasks or calendar entries - so, I can have a task for putting together a marketing plan for EventLook. In Outlook, I can put a date due and such. But, in organizing my thoughts, I could blog and then attach it to the task.

Those are some of my thoughts. I hope this helps.

Wayde