Client Case Study: Datalicious

Datalicious

After a busy few months, another happy customer went live with their updated cloud infrastructure. Datalicious is crack SEO/SEM consultancy that has racked up major gains for their clients like Vodafone Australia. More than just improving your search rankings, they holistically look at the volumes of data that your site visitors create and create strategies for acting upon those insights. You really should check out their case study here.

So given that this client was comprised of hardcore techies, I knew that their solution had to be perfect. We went through our traditional process for analysing the current productivity problems in the organisation through manager and user interviews, which included 1-1 discussions as well as physically watching employees work to identify usability flaws in existing tools or breakdowns in information flow.

After a handful of sessions identifying the key software tools that could help Datalicious grow to the next level, Pragmati demonstrated research conducted on the various SaaS ecosystems availible to meet their needs for accounting, time tracking, billing and invoicing as well as CRM. Over 40 vendors were evaluated including Google Docs, Javeline, WorkflowMAX, ProWorkflow, Basecamp, Microsoft Sharepoint to name a few.

At Pragmati we strongly believe in agile methodologies, and testing often and early was the key strategy. We quickly went through 3 rounds of user testing various components and their integrations to other pieces. For example, the team loved the integrations between WorkflowMAX and Xero and Javelin, but the team decided to move to ProWorkflow because it afforded more granular controls and a more efficient UI. These conclusions could have been delayed by weeks if we followed the classic enterprise software route of installing servers, and only then realising we had to make a platform change.

At the end of the day, Pragmati was able to create greater insights into profitability via improved time tracking and being able to capitalize on leads with an efficient CRM that is integrated fully into their accounting package, Xero. They’re reducing the time spent generating and updating quotes, management reports and client status updates. As well, with greater reporting they have found certain insights that helped identify issues in their billing cycles, leading to better cash flows. What could be more important in the services industry.

Long overdue updates to Google Sites

As anyone who has used Google Sites as a corporate CMS in frustration earnest knows, it leaves a bit to be desired. However, features come with time as you’d expect from the freeware giant. There’s now a new Google Sites Data API in Labs that allows client applications to access, publish and modify content within a Google Site. With this new API, Google Apps administrators can:

One Step Closer to Google Contacts Sync: Floreysoft Shared Contacts

Almost every client of Pragmati have been eagerly awaiting contact syncing nirvana for Google Apps. Thanks to a prodigious developer in Germany, we are one step closer today. We’ve been testing a freemium application from FloreySoft aptly called Shared Contacts.

This Google AppEngine app allows you to create a group with Google Contacts that is shared amongst subscribers that you elect. I should say, this app actually handled the entire group creation and invitation process quite elegantly. Check out the video for a comprehensive demo.

What this tool provides is a quick and easy way to ensure that your contacts in your Google Domain (or personal GMail account up to 50 contacts) are synchronized, without having to bother passing around Excel spreadsheets or VCards. Or, even worse, having to custom build a laughable solution using the Google Shared Contacts API.

Jokes at Google aside, this tool is most useful for those who rely on the their mobile phones and value that mobile address book as their single source of truth; given that GMail supports various phones and syncs quite well by now. What this solution doesn’t aim to solve, and is still an existing issue in the marketplace for small businesses, is that there are few CRM solutions that make use of the Google Contacts Data API, Shared or otherwise. We strongly feel that the last piece of the puzzle for getting contact information out the CRM is key for the SaaS salesman on the street. Thankfully, this solution brings your small business one step closer because you can at least export contacts from your CRM into Google Contacts quite easily. Heck, if you use Heap CRM, this can be a quite straightforward 2 click process. We only wish more CRM vendors would jump on the Google Contacts bandwagon already. We just can’t stand waiting for a sure thing.

Kudos to FloreySoft for the super fast turnaround time installing this application in our Google Apps domain.

SocialText provides free service for 50 users

In a move to further commoditize enterprise functionality for the masses, SocialText is offering their suite for free for up to 50 users. This will be a great way to introduce social networking and collaboration to SMEs with a rather rich suite of tools. This would compete directly with Google Sites. Although one could argue that similar interfaces and experiences could be built using Sites templates, this requires custom development. In addition, SocialText truly shines with it’s desktop application and it’s rip of Twitter/Yammer: Signals. These are two features that Google doesn’t have, and I’m not entirely convinced until Waves launches, Google will have much to offer in terms of thought leadership around social networking. Yet.

What’s Included in Free 50

So what do we get for free? Most of the core features of Socialtext are offered as part of Free 50, including:

• the Facebook-like private social network.
• the customized home page dashboard.
• a collaborative workspace that blends wiki and blog functionality.
• Signals, the Twitter-like messaging system.
• Desktop, an Adobe Air desktop application that provides monitoring and access to Socialtext without having to constantly visit the Socialtext web site.

What you can’t do is create multiple workspaces, so there’s no separation of content for project work, clients or similar boundaries. However, as a starting point or intranet homepage, this is a great way to feel the “pulse” of the organisation, potentially linking off to other 3rd party applications via simply RSS feeds that insert activity streams to Basecamp, etc.

JavelinCRM, Xero and Google Apps

One of our client projects involves extensions of the popular hosted accounting software Xero, winner of the 2009 Webby Award and for good reason. In optimising their entire business processes from end to end, the accounting software used is often the “beach head application” or the first line of attack from which all other typical “back office” IT projects stem.

As such, when deciding to “replace vs. integrate” when analysing cloud solutions, we have to make the tradeoff between the costs of customising a 3rd party tool that is perhaps best of breed (say Salesforce.com) or  taking productised, off the shelf integrations as is the case with JavelinCRM.

About JavelinCRM alone

At first glance, Javelin is a promising tool. After 30 minutes of testing with the free account I could easily perform the core 80% of the features of other platforms (older vendors take note, you have to provide trials in this day and age).

What struck me as especially appealing was the out of the box support for customisation without any coding or scripting. Features like Tracks (a nice cute and fuzzy term for salesforce automation workflows), DataTags (Custom database fields and look-up tables) and Pipeline templates all provide the features that most organisations need without cluttering the interface.

This is what set Javelin apart from other CRM solutions is that not only did they recognmize that 1) every organisation has a different sales process, so its imoprtant to not make too many assumptions built into the default CRM implementation and 2) the most common customisations need to be editable without coding. The second principal is one of my most coveted paradigms in software product design: if you can create a reasonable interface for allowing “power users” to joystick around the application, you can harness a whole new level of viral adoption that you’ll never get with simlpy a developer level API.

JavelinCRM and Xero

Aside from the ease of use, Javelin is most promising as it supports Xero from a contact management perspective, a key feature of CRM software in general. Synchronised invoices and contacts are key features of the integration. In our next post on Javelin, we’ll look at how we can create end to end contact management across Google Apps, Xero, Javelin and your mobile, such as your iPhone.

Analytics and BI in the Cloud

There was a good article in CIO today about smaller organisations leveraging analytics and business intelligence tools. Here’s a telling quote that is inline with what Pragmati is delivering to our clients and their needs:

Every company-from the smallest start-up to the largest firm-needs to be agile in today’s market to respond to changing dynamics and new competition. But these days it’s often the smaller companies who are better positioned to adapt: as the barriers to entry have decreased, emerging companies now have access to data streams-and techniques for analyzing them-that used to be the exclusive province of the largest companies.

Although most SMBs are aware of the fact that they are more agile than their larger brethren, the article does highlight a few key takeways that we often reinforce in our projects.

1. 80% of on premise IT budget goes to maintenance
   
   From the article: “The costs of managing these legacy systems are getting in the way: too much of the budget goes to maintenance, and not enough is left over for new development and technologies. “ We couldn’t say it better.
2. Dont’ waste your money on data storage
   
   As trends are only evident over time, that implies storing lots of data which can be expensive over the long term. With cloud storage systems like Amazon, Google and several other niche providers, storage has evolved beyond the local data center which is more costly to maintain.
3. Leverage what’s free today Premiere tools for analysing data are now available that would have been unattainable for smaller companies. Solutions like the popular Salesforce.com or the free ZOHO CRM suite can be used to give you a platform for the core 80% of the BI features that bring the most value. As you might already know, the majority of the high end enterprise features go unused in expensive commercial suites.

If you would like better insights into your business, including customer trends, sales pipelines and research, contact us today.

For more research on the trend that shows that 75% of APAC CIOs are looking to SaaS or Cloud for Business Intelligence, see this research report. It gets good at page 13.

Email hosting and Security with Google Apps Premiere

Email Hosting Solutions

Using the full capabilities of Google Apps Premier Edition, Pragmati offers one of the most feature-rich and affordable hosted email solutions. With 25GB of space per mailbox, storage charges are a thing of the past. Free integration tools for Blackberry, TREO, Palm, and smart phone devices further enhances the cost/benefit of this solution.

Email Security Solutions

Google Message Security provides the best anti-spam, virus prevention solution for in-house email services. With advanced features, such as spooling, directory harvest attack prevention, and non-account bounce, Google Message Security can improve network and email performance, availability, and reliability.

Google Message Discovery provides compliant archive and discovery services for in-house email services. With flexible retention periods and discovery tools that meet the most stringent regulatory requirements, Google Message Discovery provides compliance without expensive hardware and software to install and manage.