At What Cost

One of the things that I teach people as Denver DataMan is how to be more efficient in the ways they use the computer. This means finding software within one’s means that will help them do a task better than they could do before. This does not mean doing a task quicker, so it does not come out as well or so that you annoy others who will have to interact with the software.

Recently I have been asked to schedule meetings twice on a website called TIMEBRIDGE . It is a great idea. You send people times they might be able to meet and get back what times work and send out a link for the meeting. This is similar to an Outlook meeting request, without having to know that everyone is using Outlook. In theory this is wonderful but when the system does not let the recipient propose a new time. Also when the sender moves the time and the recipient gets three emails back this cannot be efficient for either party.

Evaluating software is like evaluating any tool. What does it do? What does it do well? What does it not do so well? What is the net gain? What is the cost?

With all of the great tools on the Internet we can’t use them all nor do we want to. Find tools that work and make you more productive. If you’re not sure what will work for you then ask a friend or a consultant to help you evaluate a product.

Just because an Internet product is free today does not mean it will be free tomorrow. Lots of products run very long public betas (test cycles) and the software is free at this time. Take Jott.com, this service was free for a long time and then they scaled back what was free and then started charging for everything. This is something else to consider when choosing services and software.

Remember efficiency needs to show a net gain.

The Experience Pros Radio Show

This past Tuesday I had the great opportunity and honor to be on the Experience Pros radio show to talk about Contact Relationship Management and how DDM can help people to leverage it. It was great to be in the studio with Angel and Eric and to learn from them.

I hope you will listen to the show and follow along with the CRM Scorecard.