selling software with a steep learning curve

>You product Replaces a problem instead of solves it... so...

LOL

I love this conclusion: how true !

>Set up a service and offer it complete with a human brain...

we offer the program together with support.

We even offer support during evaluation.

The problem starts when the user is left alone in front of the program
at evaluation time.

Without proper education, he gets into trouble pretty soon.

>Complete your product development Process to meet market expectations

we are working on the product every day

>Change your target

we were amazed to find people who learnt how to use the program in
minutes.

Unfortunately these type of customers are spread across the different
market segments.

It seems they just have a flair for maths.

I asked myself: which company found itself in the same position in the
past ? The obvious answer was: Autodesk in the 80's.

This article I found in the net is quite inspiring

http://www.fourmilab.ch/autofile/www/section2_38_5.html

Thank you

Peppe Polpo

>I believe Macromedia has software whereby you can put
>together a step-by-step sort of training demo.

we used Camtasia to produce Flash demos.

A number of demos are avaiable on our site.

But when the user is left alone in front of his PC, troubles begin.

You need proper training.

You need to practice the application for 2-3 days with a live
instructor that corrects your mistakes.

>In addition, if possible, make the software easier to use.

we are working at it all the time

>Do they accept that for rostering?

but about 20% of workers do shifts.

Thousands of foremen spend 4-5 hours to prepare the rostering every
month.

Several hours are spent to do rostering maintenance (changes, ill
leaves, etc).

If you reduce the time spent for rostering from hours to minutes, you
spare a lot of money.

Also, computer aided rostering is optimized to a level that cannot be
reached by hand.

So maybe there will never be a profession for rostering, but sure
there is and there will be a demand for sparing that money.

Thank you

Peppe Polpo

Peppe Polpo wrote:
>

> other than the general purpose application, we developed a number of
> vertical applications that optimize the rostering of companies that
> do:
>
> - catering
> - night-watchman service
> - supermarkets
> ....
>
Tell me how what the product can do for a food manufacturer - since it's
applicable to catering companies.

Thanks
Herb

Peppe Polpo wrote:

>
>>users could toggle on and off certain advanced functions
>
> we have many ideas re how to improve the application and your
> suggestion is surely one of the possible improvements.
>
> However we feel that there will always be a hill to climb for the new
> users.
>
> Many of them have been preparing the rostering by trial and error for
> the last 20 years and are suddenly put in front of a computer program
> that asks them to input abstract logic rules.

Googling "rostering software" gets 32,000 English-language hits. Is this
situation the same with all of your competitors or have some of them found
a way around this difficulty? If they try your product, decide that they
don't like it, and try another one instead that is even marginally better
then you've lost the sale. That's the risk with trialware.

Can you put in sets of canned rules that cover a broad range of situations
and let them select among those rules? Or can you produce an expert system
that writes the rules?

> It is the same shock met by old technical designers that are put in
> front of a CAD program.
>
> It would be interesting to study how Autodesk launched Autoplan in the
> 80's

You mean AutoCAD? They launched it as a cheap reduced-capability
alternative to Catia and CADAM and a number of other products. The way
they became large was by being early in the game and establishing a large
base of trained users, thus making it cheaper to buy AutoCAD and hire
someone who already knew it than to buy another product which might be less
expensive or superior in capability and train users who were unfamiliar
with it.

> Thank you
>
> Peppe Polpo

--
--John
to email, dial "usenet" and validate
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)

>Googling "rostering software" gets 32,000 English-language hits.

I know the competition.

Microsoft could tell you that Excel is a rostering software, as most
foremen use it as a blackboard to prepare a rostering.

Other programs will help you in different percentages, but finally you
make the moves (manually, I mean).

A few programs will try to more, but will give you the answer
overnight.

Only our software is completely automatic and fast: you input the
rules and the program builds the rostering in seconds.

>Can you put in sets of canned rules that cover a broad range of situations
>and let them select among those rules?

interesting point.

It would be a nice feature to add a picklist of different union rules.

>Or can you produce an expert system that writes the rules?

we are working at it

>The way they became large was by being early in the game ...

despite the 32000 google hits, I guess we are the first ones or among
the first ones to offer this kind of product

>...and establishing a large base of trained users

this is the point.

How can this be done ?

Thank you

Peppe Polpo

>Tell me how what the product can do for a food manufacturer - since it's
>applicable to catering companies.

I cannot speak for a food manifacturer (no idea about their needs),
but catering companies hire hundreds of part time or full time workers
that are avaiable during different time intervals during the week.

Say that employee X can be used

start time end time
monday tMON1 tMON2
tuesday tTUE1 tTUE2
.....

and he is contracted to work for TOThours each month.

Different employees have different time constraints.

On the other side, duties to fill are known.

For each day and time slot, you need a different number of cooks,
dishwashers, delivery men, etc.

Not every employee can be used as cook, dishwasher, delivery man, etc
Different employees have different (multiple) skills.

Our application combines all these constraints and gives a result in
seconds.

Think of doing that by hand...

Peppe Polpo

Peppe Polpo wrote:

>
>>Googling "rostering software" gets 32,000 English-language hits.
>
> I know the competition.
>
> Microsoft could tell you that Excel is a rostering software, as most
> foremen use it as a blackboard to prepare a rostering.
>
> Other programs will help you in different percentages, but finally you
> make the moves (manually, I mean).
>
> A few programs will try to more, but will give you the answer
> overnight.
>
> Only our software is completely automatic and fast: you input the
> rules and the program builds the rostering in seconds.
>
>>Can you put in sets of canned rules that cover a broad range of situations
>>and let them select among those rules?
>
> interesting point.
>
> It would be a nice feature to add a picklist of different union rules.

If you can save someone having to figure out how every change in the rules
affects his rostering then you would likely be percieved as saviors--you'd
have to keep the rules up to date though with periodic updates.

>>Or can you produce an expert system that writes the rules?
>
> we are working at it
>
>>The way they became large was by being early in the game ...
>
> despite the 32000 google hits, I guess we are the first ones or among
> the first ones to offer this kind of product
>
>>...and establishing a large base of trained users
>
> this is the point.
>
> How can this be done ?

I don't think that the AutoCAD model is directly comparable to your
situation--there were CAD programs available in the market prior to AutoCAD
that were much more capable--the difficulty with them was that they
required a mainframe and cost tens of thousands of dollars a year in
leasing fees--the cost of training the few draftsmen they supported was
negligible in comparison with the other costs involved. Nonetheless, for
complex projects the large manufacturing companies saw the value. So
AutoCAD has a pre-made market that they simply marched into with a
relatively inexpensive product--the choice was pretty much AutoCAD or a
mainframe and for small and some medium sized businesses a mainframe was
out of the question. Once they started developing an installed base in
those businesses they picked up momentum fast enough that nobody else has
managed to catch up.

That does lead to a question though--is there a mainframe-based product for
which yours is a viable alternative? If there is and if you can import
rules from it and if the competition can't then you may have a ready-made
market that way.

> Thank you
>
> Peppe Polpo

--
--John
to email, dial "usenet" and validate
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)

>That does lead to a question though--is there a mainframe-based product for
>which yours is a viable alternative? If there is and if you can import
>rules from it and if the competition can't then you may have a ready-made
>market that way.

railway and airway companies use mainframes and a large group of
programmers to build their timetables.

Also all sport championship calendars are built the same way.

Cons are: it is a very small, specialized and tough (technically
tough) target.

Here a mainframe still does a difference.

Thank you

Peppe Polpo

About these motivations seeming too restrictive...
Agreed... add ***.


I love to understand how stuff works and how people tick . I read,
study, test, and observe, then make notes.

If you throw in ***... This leaves us with power, fear, ***, ease, and
prestige. (I said money because I was relating it to the corporate
paradigm...) but it is actually either power, greed or money depending
on the nature of the research.. plus the others on the list. This list
is referenced in J. Conrads "guerilla Marketing" book but the primary
source is a yale publication I believe.

But still, indeed this is a slight oversimplification of human
motivation but because the nature of it is complex, I'm sharing things
useful to help him get his arms around it and pointed in the right
direction. Right this second I'm temporarily separated from my text
library, so I cannot site the specific research now, (though I do
appreciate your asking) but if after reading this you still desire it,
(hopefully it will all be cleared up) I will search it on the web or
have it searched.

One reason the list seemed too restrictive to me at first is the
confusion of motivation with drive and needs. These are not the same but
confusing them is common. Thus when we think of motivation, many
variations seem to emerge when considering various cultures, periods,
religions etc.

Upon scrutiny, however, it becomes plain that most every motivation can
be reduced to one of the above primary motivations. Even when accounting
for these cultural differences. The guy who says "NO FEAR!" will go on
to have it applied in a bumper sticker.. "prestige/ Exclusivity"? Those
lil guys (motivations) creep on you before you know what hit you.

Motivation is the process of a goal being met with action to attain that
goal... but further, for the purposes of psychology, certainly in this
context (consumerism) we are speaking not of fundamental human drives or
needs, but something more elusive.


What we have to grasp as marketers dabbling into consumerism is the
nature of that mobilizing thing... that something ... the "activation
mechanism" shaped by learning... that moves us BEYOND the physical level
of needs (primal/ biological drives).

While "drives" may be an instinctive goal, motivation is the reason we
exert effort towards them, rather than to simply conserve the energy
thus expended and possibly suffer through the outcomes.

If we take something like companionship, the elements of motivation can
be seen in play. A person may say that the desire to share "their life
and love with another" is why they call the matchmaker. This may be true
on the surface. But there are tons of people who would love to share
their life.. homeless, those needing hospice, orphans etc.


So what sensational concept or feeling is at the CORE of it all.. what
REALLY makes them literally pick up the phone, go through all the
riggamahrole of paying the fees, kissing all the toads etc?

Underneath lurks motivations, such as fear of being alone or lonely,
desire for financial stability ($$), desire for *** or safe ***, to have
someone to look after us when we're old (ease), or the sense of being
accepted in the community.

As to TRUE LOVE.. well, IMHO K. Gibran said it best, when you can gaze
into the eyes and love the female of 6 months, the female of 25, and the
female of 100 years with equal love, then you know what true love might
be.

But what if they say they just want to have fun doing things with that
special someone? Well if that someone is not special to us, it's really
not much fun, right? But what IS special about that someone is most
likely that WE feel special when we are with THEM. It's how they make us
feel. Oops, we're back to pride and prestige .
Ego strokes required. So.. the motivations snuck up on us again.

The motivation to achieve social status is often viewed as a derivative
of the *** drive. Maybe, maybe not, but it can hardly be divorced from
the need for prestige (which is exclusivity or conspicuous consumption
in marketing terms).

Motives are sometimes hurriedly classed as deficiency motives, such as
the need to remove the physiological deficiency of hunger or thirst, or
abundancy motives, i.e., motives to attain greater satisfaction and
stimulation. However when you get rid of the idea of basic survival and
it's instincts, you are back to the basic core motivations, and the
instinctive stuff is, again, better classified as drives.

What does it mean to marketing planners?

POSITIONING.
The work non-marketers love to hate

Why do we need designer water on our store shelves? It wetter? No. Does
it sell? Yes. Now we're talking understanding motivation dynamics.


But back to your question... isn't there more to us than those few
motivations? Theoretically yes... the "spirit" if you allow me, is
always at war with them. Sometimes we can see flashes of compassion so
brilliant they are truly romantic. A. Maslow has classified motives into
five developmental levels, with the satisfaction of physiological needs
most important and esteem and self-actualization needs least important.
He is dealing primarily, in those ower levels, with drives which
translate, in established societies, certainly in marketing, as fears of
doing without something.

According to Maslow, the most basic needs must be satisfied before
successively higher needs even can emerge. This means that while there
are five levels, the upper ones will seldom emerge and the lower ones
are constantly in play to varying degrees. Thus you see the pyramid with
few people attaining actualization, although I feel that a number of
people attain this level periodically through peak experiences and
heroic deeds. And, at that level, experience very few needs or fears.
But the desire for constant actualization is not the same as the
motivation to actually take the steps to attain it.
Many times in fact, the two are confused, as when spirituality is
defined AS these very motivations -- delving in... FEAR, POWER, MONEY,
EXCLUSIVITY (PRESTIGE) etc. The idea of all this handed out WITH
spiritually in a plate is VERY appealing.. What's not to love? lol. So
you see, friend, knowledge of these motivations it can even seductively
sell SPIRITUALITY!

Cognitive psychologists (Albert Bandura comes to mind) have long
suggested that individual mental processes, such as beliefs, play an
important role in motivation, But even within these systems of beliefs
we see the dynamics of fear, power, and other motivations at play. The
promise of exclusivity... or, we see the expectation of certain
reinforcements for certain behaviors... even threats of loss of status.
shunning, etc.

Speaking of religion, even in the bible Jesus was reportedly tempted
with these types of things...lol.... and after, angels came to minister
to him well perhaps that says it all right there about how we humans
tick. lol.

Personally I have done lots of experimenting with headlines.. and I have
found that many people do not really know themselves nor admit their
motivations (!!)Try this... have people pick out a "headline" that would
"work" with them. Then, test the headline for response... not much
relationship lol. Seems people are in denial of their core motivation
much of the time!
Thus is the reality of the unconscious mind.

And.. by the way.. if you have read this far, you may want to know...
when you ever find a person living "above" or beyond those 5
motivations...

FEAR
MONEY (OR POWER OR GREED)
***
EXCLUSIVITY (PRESTIGE)
EASE (LEISURE)

....we have a name for them in this society -- "insane".

Yes my friend, the things they will do and not do, without those dreaded
motivations, are so far out the box, they will likely be severely
penalized within this culture. We will call the "men in white jackets"
to have them promptly hauled off .. too far out of our comfort zone,
although we say those very motivations are not OUR motivations most
times, hands down.


~zion

Can you Target your products to those three industries and account for
80% of your needed billings?

If so, refocus on those industries (DO it fast, do it hard, and use
stealth marketing practices meaning TARGETED DIRECT, TELEMARKETING etc)
but stay out of industrial publications as much as possible.

Use rapid deployment in those sectors to pay the almightey bills whilst
R&D catches up, using money from your sales to those markets to fuel R&D
to a simpler product. Add better user interface, more intuitive symbols
on user panels etc.


~zion