This coming week the team at MioWorks.com will unveil the application for the first time to a limited audience. We are introducing the solution at the Ignite Portland event to a planned audience of about 750 local hackers, thought leaders and good old fashion non-techies. Each attendee will receive an invitation to take a tour of the solution and provide feedback.
We have decided not to launch our public web site until after the initial rounds of feedback are obtained. This will help us make sure that we aren’t influencing the opinions. So with that being said, I’ll go ahead and show a few pieces of the puzzle but first let me explain the application. MioWorks.com was built specifically for the small business owner. In our world we feel that the small business has less than 20 employee, typically run by the owner or a partner, have very little to no technical resources and they spend their time running the business, not fidgeting with software. The business problem we decided to attack was the ability of the small business to interact with their customers via the web. Starting with the basics we created a foundation for the solution around contact management. Since this solution is all about the company working with a client/customer we made focus on a contact centric approach. Everything in the MioWorks.com world is associated to a contact. Here is a screen shot from the application that shows the details around a single contact record:
Combine information with interaction
From simple contact management we then looked at the business processes that caused headaches for small business owners. The biggest issue was moving files around including proofs, proposals, videos, invoices and the likes. In today’s electronic world every day files have surpassed the limitations of email. In addition to having the ability to privately share a file/document with a client the business owners also wanted a way to quickly get an approval from a client and have a permanent record of that approval.
We also talked to dozens of small business owners and they explained the daily struggle with email. Unable to find a response to a customer. Unable to locate an email. These were common themes among the small businesses. To solve this problem we implemented an issue management system that simplifies asking questions and providing responses.
To bring this all together we looked at both sides of the equation. Company on one hand, client on the other hand. We came up with the concept of the MioWorks auto-generated customer portal. This portal is easily activated by clicking a single button in the contact record. Once activated the contact will receive an automated email invitation that includes log in instructions. Once the contact logs into the customer portal they will be able to upload/download files of any size, ask a question, view answers or make a request. They will also be able to edit their own profile that will automatically update the contact information inside of MioWorks.com. The company has control over the features in the portal through the administration screen in the application. They can decide if they want to use file sharing, issue management or profile updates. Here is a screen shot of the standard customer portal we will be using for the initial release:
Auto generated portal allows customers to interact
If you would like to participate in the private preview and give us your feedback, please send an email to preview@mioworks.com and we will include you on the next round. For now I’ll leave the rest to your imagination.
….David Abramowski
