Archive for the 'Bizroof' Category

An Open Letter to Santa Claus (from Bizroof CRM)

Published
by
Francis Green
on December 24, 2008
in Bizroof and CRM
. 0 Comments

Hi Santa,

You must be very very busy at the moment. I bet you are reviewing your list to make sure everybody gets the right present. I bet you have always been watching to see who is naughty or nice throughout the whole year. :-)

Santa, I wish I could do you a favor and make your life easier. If you have time, please have a look at our CRM application. It is web based, and you can access your data from anywhere anytime. Also, we support multiple users. So, every elf can have an account, and then they can share data with you in real time. Additionally, you can track their locations in Bizroof.

Our contact management module is powerful and easy-to-user. If you store your big list on our system, you can then tag them the way you want. You can search contacts by their addresses whenever you are coming to town… Also, your contacts can be added onto your events, which will be shown on your calendar. By the way, if you use Google calendar or MS Outlook, you can synchronize our calendar with theirs.

Since our basic accounts are free, there’s no reason not to explore further. You can click here to take the tour.

Santa, I would like to take this opportunity to express my thanks to you. You are so kind and always watching us……

Kind Regards,

Francis Green

New Contact Us Form

Published
by
Francis Green
on November 27, 2008
in Bizroof
. 9 Comments

We just rolled out a new contact us form, which ensures that your messages arrive the most relevant departments via the shortest route. :-)

Due to the high volume of messages, you may have to wait couple of hours to get replied. But, we guarantee to answer every question comes to us.

We respect your feedback and develop the system just for you. By the way, we won’t use your data for any purpose without your permission.

Subscribe to your events in iCalendar format

Published
by
Jason Smith
on October 8, 2008
in Announcements and Bizroof
. 1 Comment

You can now subscribe to your events feed so that other calendars which supports the iCalendar format can stay up-to-date with Bizroof.

The following is a list of applications which support iCalendar: Apple iCal, Mozilla Calendar, Google Calendar, Microsoft Office Outlook, Windows Live Calendar etc.

Blog Upgraded to Wordpress 2.6 + K2 Theme 1.0-RC7

Published
by
Francis Green
on August 3, 2008
in Announcements and Bizroof
. 0 Comments

We just upgraded the bizroof blog to wordpress 2.6 with the K2 theme 1.0-RC7. :-)

And here is a list of wordpress plugins we are currently using:

  1. AddThis Social Bookmarking Widget (Reason: promote blog)
  2. Akismet (Reason: stop spams)
  3. FeedBurner FeedSmith (Reason: redirect blog feeds to our FeedBurner)
  4. Google XML Sitemaps (Reason: inform search engines whenever blog updated)
  5. K2 Disable Widgets (Reason: integrate the K2 theme)
  6. WP Google Analytics (Reason: track bog statistics)

Give us a shout if you think we missed any great plugins. :)

Matt

What smart salespeople need?

Published
by
Francis Green
on July 18, 2008
in Bizroof, CRM and Small Biz
. 0 Comments

WHAT’S YOUR WEAKNESSES, SMART SALESPEOPLE?

Good salespeople always know what, how, when to talk to their customers. Wow, that must take ages to learn! How the hell could they remember all the previous conversations with their customers?

Hmm… that is not that difficult… I can simply take notes about phone calls and have a look at them just before I pick up the phone again. Ain’t I smart? :-)

But what if you are not the only person talk to the customer? What if your colleague take a day off and the boss want you to do his work on that day?

Hmm… I don’t know then, what do you reckon?

You need a database to store the contacts and conversations collected by all the people in your office. You will soon discover the magic of that database which tells you everything you need to become a smart salespeople.

GOOD PRODUCT + EFFECTIVE MARKETING + ? =  REPEAT SALES

We have a brilliant product. We invest heavily on marketing. BUT, the sales report makes me cry. I need advice.

If you think your potential customers believe what you tell them, you are in danger. They do digest your message, BUT they prefer to trust what their friends tell them. Therefore, you need to focus on your existed customer and MAKE THEM HAPPY, and they will definitely pass the “happy” experience to their friends.

How could I make them happy?

Simple, you just do whatever you promised, even tiny stuff. The straightforward approach is to populate the “promises” onto an easy-to-use calendar which makes you confident to say “I’ve done it all!”

WHAT DOES BIZROOF PROMISE?

We try the best to provide a best way to store, organize and share information.

We try the best to make you succeed.

What’s Bizroof Made?

Published
by
Francis Green
on July 6, 2008
in Bizroof and Technologies
. 2 Comments

The application is made with PHP and javascript, and we use a MySQL database. Amazon’s S3 is used for storage of files upload by users. Prototype and script.aculo.us provides us with easy-to-use and sexy user interface. We use Zend Framework APIs to support web services (such as Google, Flickr, Yahoo and Amazon). Meanwhile, we support microformat and RSS.

Wordpress helps us to build our fantastic Bizroof Blog which is powered by K2 theme, and iconshock provides all the icons we need.

What makes your rich? The idea or the execution

Published
by
Francis Green
on June 27, 2008
in Bizroof, Small Biz and Whatever
. 3 Comments

It is not hard to write a long list of great ideas. If you are lazy, you can just visit some business startup forum or network sites to steal them. Sitting around your office, sipping latte and looking at the idea list, now what? You probably thinking how the hell you can convert a idea into a product…. It is probably pain in the neck to get it built. But, if you find the right person to do it, you can still get it done without any problem.

And now, you feel released and excited about the beta launch… You are in danger if you think you make a solid step in the direction of making money, seriously. The real battle is just about to start, and the new product is no more than a weapon. Come to think of it this way, any senior web developers like myself can clone an application like ebay, facebook, amazon etc within months, but could any of them make me a millionaire? Not now, and not in a million years. :-)

As time is ticking away after the beta launch, you will loss your enthusiasm and start to doubt about the product. The big question marks will be all around your office - what have I done wrong? Nothing wrong but you didn’t realize the fact that either the idea nor the product itself will make you rich.

9 months back, I was in that situation…. But, I was lucky, I found a great mentor who showed me everything from a new angle, including:

  1. Think globally from day one
  2. Understand your competitors as much as you can, including their strengh, weakness and targeted markets
  3. Ask yourself how are you going to provide the best customer service
  4. Ask yourself what could be the worst case scenario in terms of markeing approach, and then how you can improve on
  5. Don’t make assumptions. If you don’t know say I don’t know, and then try to find the answers

Regards,

Matt

Is MobileMe Innovative?

Published
by
Francis Green
on June 27, 2008
in Bizroof and Technologies
. 0 Comments

If you never heard about Apple’s MobileMe, what do you think it does? Mobile… mobile phone? get connected anywhere? Me…. all about my stuff? Yes, you are absolutely right. It is a simple way to keep everything organize and sync. If you look closer, MobileMe is actually a web-based application which helps to store and manage your emails, contacts, calendars and files on both your computers and iPhones or iPod.

The idea is not new and so simple. Well… all the brilliant ideas are simple. The question is that what is the innovative stuff involved?

SproutCore, a javascript platform is being used to provide the desktop-like feel. This approach is definitely not new as there are plenty of similar platforms being used all over the place, you name it… Google Web Toolkit, Ext-js, Objective-J, YUI etc.

The business model is not new neither. Keep everything up to date and share large files with friends are well discussed and executed throughout the web industry.

Could MobileMe succeed? I think so…. The reasons are simple:

A. Apple has a good reputation building easy to use stuff.

B. Apple has a massive consumer base, among which there are plenty of evangelists.

C. MobileMe can solve problem, fairly enough :-)

Build a web app (LAMP) - build your team first

Published
by
Francis Green
on June 7, 2008
in Bizroof and Whatever
. 0 Comments

If you ask anybody in the software industry to tell you some creative ideas, most of them could give you a big list of ideas fairly easily. However, the ideas themselves won’t bring you any success but the execution of the ideas will. Any failure of delivering ideas is rooted in the bad team design, in another word, you don’t have the right person working on the project at the right time.

If you have all the same team members working on the project during the entire development stage, you are in a dangerous zone for the cost-effective sake. I would like to share my experience of building a good team for web apps:

Development stage of a web app: (Usability and infrastructure)

  • 1 full-time Graphic designer (core skills needed: css, html, usability, sense of style)
  • 2 full-time Developers (core skills needed: Object-Oriented PHP / AJAX / Javascript / MySQL / server administration)

Close to the end of the development stage: (Start public relationship)

  • 1 full-time Developer (core skills needed: OO PHP / AJAX / Javascript / MySQL / Unit test)
  • 1 full-time SEO (core skills needed: professional writing / in-depth understanding of search engine and backlinks)

Beta lauch stage: (all about PR)

  • 1 full-time SEO focus on public relation articles (core skills needed: professional writing / in-depth understanding of search engine and backlinks)
  • 1 part-time SEO focus on blog and forum (core skills needed: professional writing)
  • 1 part-time developer for ad hoc functions

Remove beta label: (PR and partnership)

  • 1 full-time SEO focus on public relation articles (core skills needed: professional writing / in-depth understanding of search engine and backlinks)
  • 1 part-time SEO focus on blog and forum (core skills needed: professional writing)
  • 1 part-time developer for ad hoc functions
  • 1 partership builder (core skills needed: building partnerships across the web app industry)

I’d be a fool if I thought I knew it all. So, please don’t hesitate to share your ideas with us. :)

Project management is all about managing exceptions

Published
by
Francis Green
on June 6, 2008
in Bizroof
. 1 Comment

Recently, I talked with a project manager who has over 6 years project management experience in big organizations. I asked him that what is the most important skills about managing projects, and his answer was as simple as concentration on solving team members’ problems. He was absolutely right!

If a project goes on exactly as planned, there is no need for managing at all. So, management is all about managing exceptions (i.e. solve problems). Responsibility is all about solving problems, cooperating is all about solving problems, and even resource allocation is all about solving problems. Additionally, the roles themselves in a team will determine what problems the person need to solve.

Meanwhile, the overall performance of a team, in some way, can be measured as its ability to solve problems and the average time length to close them. For the small projects which normally done within 2 weeks, it is easy for the project manager to identify and extinguish problems while for medium to big sized projects, it is getting harder to find out the problems. Therefore, a good project manager has to encourage the team members to tell you all their concerns throughout the entire project life cycle. In that case, you don’t have to dig into each area to drag out the bugs yourself. Moreover, your team members are well motivated and take the ownership of their tasks as well.

It is no need to be panic if you are managing some projects which you don’t understand inside out, coz your team members can support you if you try your best to solve their problems and eliminate their concerns.