Criteria for Success

How will we know if we're choosing the right program for our purposes at Pivot?

Good question! We asked for input from many sources and then came up with the following "Top 10 Criteria for Sucess". What do you think??

Top 10 Considerations

1. Increase efficiency 
• Eliminate steps
• Reduce time to complete steps
• Eliminate duplication
• Automate processes such as approvals, communications, moving from one stage to the next
2. Cost of ownership 
• Constantly improving technology
• Potential that users will come in knowing how to use the technology
• Reliability and downtime
3. Cost of acquisition
4. Reduce errors and miscommunication
• One place to track and record critical project milestones
• One place to document all relevant communication 
• Ability to require vital information needed for successful completion
5. Ability to connect with Khameleon & possibly Salesforce.com
6. Cost of development
• Low or no cost to develop for mobile devices
• Ease of finding developers and consultants
• Availability of apps, add-ins
• How soon consultants or programmers are needed for customization work
7. Ease of search and organization
8. Improve our client-facing communications and documents (branding)
9. Ease of training for new and existing employees
10. Ease of customizing to our individual needs

We also listed several other considerations -- honorable mention, if you will.

Other Considerations

• Dashboards and reports – individual and management views 
• Provide one place for salespeople to get an overview of their projects
• Ability to create customer-facing portals
• Ability to get electronic signatures in the field
• Increase ease of doing business with our vendors
• Ability to easily store relevant emails or log notes pertaining to a project
• Enables work to be accomplished on mobile devices
• Allows relevant files to be attached and easily accessible from the projects within the program
• Help users envision the entire business process
• Excellence of customer service/tech support

New, new Dexter Replacement

So, it's been a while since I've written in this blog. I thought it would be a good way to inform everyone of a new initiative in IT.

Most of you know that we've been planning to move out of Lotus Notes, a big part of which is building a replacement for Dexter. Last year, and some months even before that, I was working on building processes within Salesforce.com for this purpose. Some of you attended the preview I gave of that system, and some of you even did some testing -- which I very much appreciated.

However, as much as I love Salesforce.com and admire all its capabilities and potential, it is an expensive option for us. The licensing that would be required for all Pivot employees is a big cost, and we decided to look around for less expensive options.

That's where M-Files comes in!

M-Files is a document management program. It's not the same kind of program as Lotus Notes, or Salesforce.com or Khameleon or other database-type programs, but it is still a database and has similarities. One of the main features of M-Files is its use of metadata. Metadata might be a new word to you, but it's a powerful thing!

So what is metadata? Sometimes people call it "data about data," which is not a great way to define it, but might be helpful. Specifically when we're talking about files that we store, it might be called descriptions or attributes of the files. When you go into Windows Explorer and look at files (see screenshot), you see some metadata about the files - the date they were created, date modified, type of file, size and so on.

With M-Files, we can ADD metadata to the files, and then use that additional metadata to categorize, sort and so on. We won't have to figure out which folder to put things in and how exactly to name things -- instead people will be prompted to fill in fields asking for things such as the account (company) this file is associated with, the particular project, the order, the name of the contact, etc., etc., however we configure it. And then we can all search for, sort by and find things by these various pieces of ... metadata.

If that's still confusing, just be patient. As we roll out the system it'll all make sense.

Beyond the metadata feature, M-Files also has workflows and approvals. So we'll be able to move our paperless files through paperless processes -- send to your manager for approval, send to your support team for work they do, and so on.

This is just a brief overview. We'll keep you in the loop as more develops. Feel free to ask me questions, give suggestions, or voice your concerns. All input and feedback is appreciated.