Thats the golden question. My thought is I'm going to take a Cold fusion app
that I had started making years ago for my previous onsite service business,
and start adding to it. Cold fusion gives the opportunity for rapid
development, however, my time doesn't. Why Cold Fusion, because its the
only thing I know how to program :-). It would make more sense for an avid
program to modify something already hot out there like SugarCRM, but I don't
want to attempt that because I don't know PHP or Perl, and the second a
learning curve is added to the equation it the definition of a project that
definately will never get completed. Unless someone else steps up to the
plate. So Cold Fusion it is for me. My guess is that by the time I get it
to a stage of something useable, I won't needed it anymore, because someone
probably will step up to the table with something better who has more time,
and a commercial vision. However, I am plagued by Murphy's law. If I don't
start writing, I know something will never exist. If I do start writting, I
can almost guarantee that someone else will write something better sooner.
(Which we'd all benefit from). I thought about taking what I got and
making it an OpenSource project, once I got it further along. But I'm not a
trained programmer, and my skill set is getting very rusty, while competing
for company management time, so its possible it won't have the structure a
more avid programmers would want for the underlying product. What I'd
really like to see is someone else take the lead, and allow me to be an
active contributor of great ideas, since I've had a lot of thought on the
topic. But I haven't found that. I have seen a number of WISPs write some
really cool apps for their business operations, but either they were VERY
specific to their network design or they weren't offerded to be shared,
given, or sold at this time. There's a guy from Delaware.net that made a
really cool app, thats similar to Sugarforce, but its much more flexible and
accommodating for the need of managing a service company apposed to a sales
force, since he wrote it for himself to use initially. I concidered
seriously being a customer of his planned ASP commercial product. But he
hasn't released his offering yet. I'm also concerned that as a ASP product,
it would not allow the integration flexibility to integrate the app with all
our internal processes that may be unique to us or per WISP. The bottom
line is that I can't wait, I have problems today that need to be solved. I
already have gold mine or an accounting system to inefficiently but
adequately to track customers. So at minimum I'm gonna start greating Apps
for secific task that I need accomplished. For example, right now I track
all IP info adn assignment in a Wiki. It worked well because it got rid of
the paper, and made it accessable to everyone, and I got it up quick! But
its less than ideal, and would be MUCH better off in a database. So it will
be one of my first projects to take that data and put it into a database,
and maybe auto assigning new IP info. The problem is that are so many
service related apps needed, that should be integrated with front end
sales/management systems. Its a shame to re-write all the management/sales
apps when so much already exists that are nice. But I don't have the
ability to add my service apps to their sales apps, and I can't wait for
them to do it because they never will because my service apps are specific
to my business. I originally started a complex design for a master app
(customer provisioning database) that stemmed from our once going to be
router provisioning product. But the problem was that it was developed by
my staff from the perspective of router out, not customer in. A company
should not be structured by its tech, the tech should cater to the business
processes needed. We needed a more central management model to accommodate
that. Next I'd start on the lead process tracking. The problem is that their
is a lot of project management stuff out there, but its ALL sequential.
Thats not totally true, because Project management is about tracking
multiple tasks and people at once. But what I mean is that it tracks stages,
where one process is likely to happen before another, and once its checked
off and done it can move to the next. For example, any task can be given a
status. That status could be anything such as "waiting for contract" or
"scheduled" or "waiting for equipment" etc. The problem is its rarely at
just one status, its all at the same time. There needs to be multiple
statuses boxes for each of the pending tasks. "contract - submitted,
waiting, action needed, done", "scheduled - not yet, date, started,
complete", etc. Tasks need to be viewed togeather by account/job, but also
all itemized togeather in one list because many tasks are working at once.
For example, an antenna approval could take over two months to complete, I'm
working on one now thats been on my desk for 5 months. Different status gets
assigned and some don't. A schedule might get assigned, but a anntenna
approval most likely wouldn't. Its all complicated relationships, and not
likely to be whats covered in a generic Proejct management application.
Anyway, enough talk for today. We'll see what the future brings.
Tom DeReggi
RapidDSL & Wireless, Inc
IntAirNet- Fixed Wireless Broadband
----- Original Message -----
From: "Ron Wallace" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "WISPA General List" <wireless@wispa.org>
Sent: Wednesday, November 16, 2005 8:06 AM
Subject: Re: [WISPA] How to keep track of appointments
Good Thoughts, Tom. I had been thinking along similar lines.
where do we get such an animal.
Ron Wallace
---- Original message ----
Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2005 21:11:35 -0500
From: "Tom DeReggi" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: [WISPA] How to keep track of appointments
To: "WISPA General List" <wireless@wispa.org>
These all look cool for Open source of doing what Goldmine or Outlook
already do, jsut with a few more features. But the problem with these
is
they are not industry specific and are really individual centered.
Managing installtion and sales leads in the WISP industry is much
different.
Each sales lead is a project in itself. (close deal, do pre-qual
survey, do
site cisit survey, get antenna approval from landlord, start install,
progress on install, order product for install, etc). All leads should
come
to a central queue for all to view and follow up on, and then able to
be
assigned, but still viewed globally. But onced assigned, it should not
be
bulked in with tasks that are truly personal that shouldn't be viewed
from
others. I believe there are more categories than jsut task,
appointment,
project, etc. In addition should add, tech support request,
installation
schedule, onsite service schedule, without combining them to the
generic
categories of tasks and appointments. Where as a true sales
appointment
would ahve different tracking and scheduling needs than an installtion
appointment, etc. Thats the problem with these generic type of
systems.
I'd like to see something customized specifically for the processes of
a
WISP.
Tom DeReggi
RapidDSL & Wireless, Inc
IntAirNet- Fixed Wireless Broadband
----- Original Message -----
From: "Peter R." <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "WISPA General List" <wireless@wispa.org>
Sent: Tuesday, November 15, 2005 8:02 PM
Subject: Re: [WISPA] How to keep track of appointments
danlist wrote:
SugarCRM is good, so is vtiger crm which is based on the sugar crm
code
Dan
SugarCRM is the basis for SalesForce.com.
SugarCRM can be purchased in a hosted per user fashion that you can
access
anywhere.
Outlook/PDA works.
Mozilla has a calendar function. (Project Sunbird as a stand-alone).
There is a lot of groupware / collaboration ware, but as a one-man
XP
shop, I have a wild idea.
Use a Virtual Assitant (www.assistu.com).
A VA can take/make your appointments (log them on Yahoo calendar),
take
your calls, do your books, etc.
Better than hiring a full-time person.
Drop me a note if you want more info.
Regards,
Peter
RAD-INFO, Inc. - NSP Strategist
We Help ISPs Connect & Communicate
813.963.5884
http://4isps.com
ISP Expo in Tampa, Dec. 9 & 10
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Ron Wallace
Hahnron, Inc.
220 S. Jackson St.
Addison, MI 49220
Phone: (517) 547-8410
Mobile: (517) 605-4542
e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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