Project Management 2010 »

Ladies and gentlemen, I have seen the future. Being an EPM Live partner we got to see the early scoop of their new 2010 project management solution called WorkEngine.

Sure, you’re a partner you will say, so you have to sell it whether you like it or not. Wrong. As an Independent Software Vendor (ISV) we seek to implement the very best 3rd party products for our clients and will not be limited to just one supplier. We do however make a strong selection of the ones which we want to offer in the first place. Being very enthusiastic of what I have seen so far I think it is mandatory for anyone related to project management to take a good look at this product.

Last year, EPM Live was being named the global Microsoft EPM Partner of the year for a fourth year in a row. This year, EPM Live has been introduced into the Gartner PPM Quadrant as one of the 25 best project solutions available. Next to that, the product has had the most new clients of all project solutions in 2009. Now these are some facts that count.

With their new concept of WorkEngine 2010 they have taken the product to a whole new level. The product has been built on top of the new Sharepoint 2010 platform and uses all capabilities, added with some nifty features of their own. With the 2007 version just being the full package, different product levels and solutions are available for the 2010 version so smaller companies can take advantage of the product as well.

WorkEngine 2010 also features the increasingly popular Agile Scrum methodology in one of their solutions, next to the standard waterfall / MS Project methodology. This is good news for software developers seeking to leverage this method to their advantage. A special solution for service calls / helpdesk is available as well and if you want you can tie it all together with shared resources. I suggest you just take a look at www.workengine.com to get a glimpse of the product.

Being the partner for the North European market we can’t wait to implement this product for our own organization. We already run on the 2007 version, but the 2010 version should make us even more efficient and effective. Our 50% projected growth in turnover this year is in no small part also the result of implementing this solution into our organization.

I am sure others will brag about the product in the coming months in high volume as well. Hopefully we have gained an advantage over competition at that point already, catapulting growth even further. Damn, I’m excited!

You can find out more about the product at www.workengine.com or ask me about it directly.

Related subjects: epm live sharepoint workengine 2010 project management scrum development management

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Partner ships »

A partnership is easy to setup; just grab a phone, call the company which gives out the partnership, sign an agreement and off you go. Now that’s the easy part.

A good partnership sees both companies which are part of it investing time and effort into the product and partnership itself. Some people might see reselling as retail business, but the key to success lies in applying the product within your projects and benefit from it. Otherwise, you can just as easy give up the partnership right away.

Yesterday, we signed our 4th - and final - product partnership with Forward Search. Already being a partner with Umbraco, EPiServer and EPM Live this search tool can add something extra to all these products. Also, search will become more and more important in the coming years when data is ever expanding and the tools to find the information becoming more and more simplistic. At least, from an end-user’s perspective.

Having the right products in place - through partnerships - to provide our clients with a broad range of standard solutions gives us the flexibility to focus on the end solution. Each product has a basic setup, but each product also needs to be installed, configured and implemented before it can be used. We won’t focus on the basics anymore; somebody, somewhere has already done this for us and will continue to improve his product. Using shared benefits we make sure both companies focus on what they do best.

I have become a firm believer of partnerships and live them to the fullest when it comes to integrating them within our software solutions. It only works though, when the partner ships the product and starts his first sale. That is the only way to get things going, because until then, the partnership remains on paper only.

Related subjects: entrepreneur it umbraco episerver epm live forward search

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Converting products into solutions »

Having a great product is not enough anymore. All the products my company sells - umbraco, episerver and epm live - all have great features that most of the time fits to the requested business needs. Then why don’t we sell 100% since it’s that good?

Today’s businesses don’t expect to figure out working with a product anymore. They expect you to figure out how it works for them. Fair enough. This has become a result of personalization on the web and the increasing customer demands for flexibility. It also imposes an interesting question for the salespeople: do I sell the product old-school or should I become a business analyst?

I have always sold my products being a business analyst and love figuring out the right solutions. Most don’t call me sales, although I am responsible for bringing in most of the sales. Result is that most of our sales processes take up much longer, but in the end the client relationship is bound to go further for a long time. This long-term sales strategy takes up a lot of effort as well.

You know the biggest compliment I get from clients? Telling me I sold them nothing. I only got approved to invoice them on delivering the right solution.

Related subjects: entrepreneur sales umbraco episerver epm live it

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