6 Tips for Taking an Enterprise Company to the Masses

via Found & Read

6 Tips for Taking an Enterprise Company to the Masses

Posted: 29 Mar 2009 09:04 AM PDT

Ed Mallen, President and CEO, TimeDriver

One of the key sales criteria in the enterprise application space -– and one of the greatest development challenges -– is the ability to scale. At TimeTrade Systems we have met that challenge, creating a successful business selling SaaS-based applications that enable very large organizations and businesses to schedule and manage millions of appointments.

So, when we saw an opportunity to leverage our technology and deep scheduling knowledge to help individual web workers, it was a no-brainer. From a development standpoint, we'd already solved the scalability problem, and we felt designing a web-based personal appointment scheduler should be easy – and tailor-made for viral distribution. Through the process of designing, supporting and marketing TimeDriver, a Web-enabled personal scheduling solution, we've learned some interesting lessons. Here are our recommendations for any company looking at similar opportunities for growth.

1. Focus, focus, focus. Carving out a separate development team was the best way to initially develop the product. Trying to leverage our enterprise developers on a "part-time" basis for the web 2.0 product would have meant that both products suffered.
2. Balance ease of use with true business value. We had an imperative to create an easy-to-use solution that would also empower individuals to personalize their appointment invitations. In addition, we needed to ensure that users knew that the solution was not a toy and would help them better manage and drive their consulting or small businesses. Describing a range of use cases proved tremendously useful in helping users understand ways to apply TimeDriver.
3. Be prepared to face the challenge of changing the norm. We were asking end users to adopt a new way to book appointments. To drive rapid acceptance, we made the product available on free trial. Even though we see our new approach as easier, there's always resistance to adopting a new way to perform an old task. We found that providing live support encouraged the early adopters –- which included a broad mixture of recruiters, HR professionals, lifestyle coaches, faith-based groups, insurance agents and sales people — to make TimeDriver their business appointment scheduler.
4. Listen to feedback from end users. Web 2.0 end-users are very vocal and very passionate, eager to share their feedback and experiences. We've leveraged their feedback when considering new features and applied them to our enterprise product, as well. There are no bounds to end-user creativity and ingenuity, and being prepared to listen will help direct new capabilities and leverage new sales opportunities.
5. It always takes longer than you think. We leveraged Web 2.0 technologies for development, and some delays in the process were simply out of our hands. For example, we chose the Dojo toolkit to ease the development of cross platform, JavaScript/Ajax-based applications. As Dojo is Open Source, we ended up waiting for releases to support certain functionality. Be prepared to allow for extra time in your development cycle, especially if leveraging open source tools.
6. Pick a "no turning back" deadline. Software is never perfect and every development team has a natural tendency to want to continue to "tweak." We decided to launch TimeDriver at DEMO '08, so we had to be ready for prime time by then. This strategy had dual benefits. Not only did it provide a definitive date to development, but the developers also received very public recognition for their efforts.

Ed Mallen is the President and CEO of TimeTrade Systems, 25-year software industry veteran, surfer for many decades and an avid cyclist and runner.