Something good is going to happen

20 January 2009

Three weeks in and 2009 has that feel about it – that something good is going to happen.

Sure, there’s plenty of talk about how down things are – but that just means there are even more opportunities. There’s also plenty of people and companies struggling – but there are just as many new companies emerging and even more that are on the brink of something very exciting.

2009 is looking more exciting than ever for Xero as we start to break through the accounting and look at all the good stuff that can sit on top of a very solid platform.

2009 is also looking full of opportunity for Catalyst90, founded by Tom Reidy late last year in Wellington. With the current economic mood, there is a need more than ever to grow sales and that’s what Catalyst90 is all about – helping companies to establish sales and marketing protocols to fuel and sustain their growth. Catalyst90 is a 90 day program and is backed up by the CatalystQUE online quote and sales manager.

Something good is going to happen in 2009. Here are some tips to help you make it happen.

2 Comments | Business, Marketing, NZ Companies, Sales | Permalink
Posted by Andrew

mailPrimer does RSS

30 April 2008

mailPrimer is an email service, that takes your every-day email and slaps on a custom designed template – including your signature, logos and links to your website.  Its a hosted service, so its simple to redirect all of your mail through mailPrimer to centrally manage your company signatures and to get consistent branding across all of your email – which is a high touch channel with your customers and prospects.

Now  - mailPrimer allows you to include RSS headlines in every email you send, making your blog more visible to the people you talk to daily.  Considering that 92% of people don’t read blogs, but most read email, this is a non-intrusive way of raising awareness of your blog and keeping people up-to-date with your latest news.

Talk to the mailPrimer guys at 0800 MAILPRIMER or support@mailprimer.com to get setup.

Leave a Comment » | Marketing, NZ Companies, Technology | Permalink
Posted by Andrew

MyHardWired

1 August 2007

Hard Wired have launched a beta site (www.myhardwired.co.nz) providing their personal profiling system for free.

I’ve seen Hard Wired profiles on about 20 employees, friends and family members and they’ve all been incredibly accurate. Its based on 81 questions where you choose one option over another and it gives a profile that covers:

  • Your preferred style - how you like to operate when you’re on top of your game
  • Your expectations - of yourself and others, often this defines your preferred style of communication
  • Your instincts - stuff that is deep down and comes out under stress or when you relax

In each of these areas, you’re rated out of 10 for:

  • Green: processes & history orientated
  • Red: action orientated
  • Yellow: community orientated – you like to work in a team and be kept in the loop
  • Blue: you prefer to work alone and be creative

These give some pretty interesting combinations, like green/red = left brained, red/yellow = extroverted, red/blue = entrupreneurs, etc.

I am red/blue, with a bit of green under pressure. The combinations can be hard to understand, but there are some spot-on explanations, like this:

“Well Andrew, you’re one of those independent, self-reliant people who really enjoys a good project, especially if it’s creating something new. Turning your ideas into action can be highly rewarding. You’ll probably find that once you’ve finished a project, you automatically look for a new one. You may even find yourself looking for a new project as soon as you can visualize the end of the first one! Once you finish something, you probably get bored if you have to say behind and just maintain things. Where’s the fun in that?”

Once you’ve profiled yourself, it can be quite interesting to match your profile to your work-mates or partner to see how you can improve communication or to understand when to keep your mouth shut.

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Posted by Andrew

Hug a tree

24 July 2007

save-a-tree.jpgApparently, too many people print their emails and more and more mailPrimer users are adding tree-friendly ‘don’t print this email‘ messages to emails. This has impelled Tom from Calcium Software to launch a campaign to reduce everyone’s carbon-email-emissions to zero by sponsoring some dieing trees.

All you have to do to feel green for the day is click the banner and vote for the trees by sending an email to your friends from the site. All in accordance with the Unsolicited Electronic Messages Act 2007 of course.

www.saveatree.co.nz

A short note from dogbert:

dilbert20611010706191.gif

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Posted by Andrew

PlanHQ

28 June 2007

I’ve had the opportunity over the past few weeks to use PlanHQ to prepare a plan for a small software project.

Writing a business plan can be daunting and can often end up containing useless information, or being far too long. I found PlanHQ to be a good way of keeping the plan focused and organised. It guided me though the high-level thinking about the vision, objectives and opportunity before getting into the detail of the solution. The fact that I could also leave the marketing & sales section to someone else, while focusing on the delivery plan was excellent!

What sets PlanHQ apart is the integration of goals and finances into each section of the plan. The goals help you to plan for important milestones and keep the financing in-sync while executing the plan. The new dashboard also helps to keep you focused on the goals that will drive the business forward and keep your plan alive instead of gathering dust like most business plans.

The only downside was the limitations on the cheaper plans. My plan was very small, yet I needed the top price so I could have more than 10 goals. I’d rather have no limitations on the content in a plan and pay more to manage multiple plans.

Check it out: www.planhq.com

1 Comment | Business, NZ Companies | Permalink
Posted by Andrew

Straylight Studios

24 June 2007

I met Tim and Emma from Straylight Studios about a year ago at a small business expo and was quite impressed with them.

They’ve now just released their virtual kitchen training system, which is a 3D training environment for the food industry.

Straylight’s CEO, Tim Nixon, has been guiding the company’s vision to bring games to the mass market by finding immediate vertical opportunities in the Serious Games sector, a highly untapped and lucrative marketplace. Previous Straylight developments focusing on such markets as Small Business and Injury Prevention training have paved the way for this highly detailed, yet incredibly intuitive educational tool.

While the momentum gathered for this product is already huge, Mr Nixon insists that this really is only the beginning. “We’re working with partners in Europe, and the USA to ensure that we’re finding the most exciting opportunities worldwide, not just in the training space, but also in ways we can bring our distinct accessibility to the entertainment market.”

This innovative development and more are profiled on Straylight’s website http://www.straylight-studios.com/

Another software company that NZ can be proud of. Go Tim.

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Posted by Andrew

3.2.1. Xero

6 March 2007

Sir David Tweedie (Chairman of International Accounting Standards) once said, “Accounting is a primitive subject still. There are lots of things we haven’t got right. Much decision making and many businesses sit uncomfortably in the framework of the traditional accounting model, which is a creation of the manufactoring era … balance sheets are like haggis, if you knew what went into it you wouldn’t touch it”.

So what’s the solution? Should all business owners go out and take a degree in accountancy so you can run your business on valid and relevant info? No, its simple really – we just need smarter business tools and this is where Xero comes in…

http://www.drury.net.nz/2007/03/06/xero/

“Xero is an online accounting solution for small businesses, delivered on a Software as a Service (SaaS) basis. I believe it is one of the biggest market opportunities out there and a global opportunity we can credibly go after from New Zealand.

We’ve been heads down on this for some time. We have a number of beta customers on board and will soon move into a limited release. A challenge for SaaS offerings is building out operational capability. As the software is getting to where we need need it we are now beginning to now ramp up that investment so we can deliver a customer experience in line with the quality of the software. For that reason we’re bringing in customers in small batches, learning where they need guidance, rinse and repeat.

Xero is all about people. Making a difference to the people that run small businesses and providing an opportunity for our best talent to build a world class company. The next step in my career is to build a long term company and culture that attracts and fosters talent, to earn export revenue.

Xero is design led. We recruited early some of the top interaction designers we could find Philip Fierlinger and Grant Robinson.

We’ve put an awesome technical team in place with Craig Walker, Kirk Jackson, Andrew Butel, Fletcher Brown, Adam Burmister and Jeff Wegesin.

We’ve invested heavily in product management and customer care with an exceptional group of customer advocates: Michelle Perera, Andy Leeb, Catherine Walker (Orange Girl), Catherine Robinson, Donna Wylie, Larissa Paris and Louise Roebuck.

We managed to attract Kate McLaughlin from the National Business Review to run Xero marketing and communications and the very talented Darryl Gray is in house brand guy.

Small business accounting identity Hamish Edwards brings the domain expertise to ensure what we deliver is not only technically world class but really does improve the performance of a sector that makes up 95%+ of all businesses.

It’s early days but we think we’re doing something special. “

Check it out: www.xero.com

Leave a Comment » | Business, Finance, NZ Companies, SaaS, Software, Xero | Permalink
Posted by Andrew

mailPrimer

9 January 2007

mailPrimer – 100% Java, fully extensible SMTP Server

If you’re looking for a reliable, commercial, 100% java SMTP server, that you can extend and customise to your heart’s content – then Calcium Software (www.calcium.co.nz) has a solution for you.

mailPrimer is an SMTP server that has been built from scratch and is sold as an eMarketing service, however, when I say eMarketing – don’t think newsletters and bulk email. While mailPrimer is fully capable of managing your recipient database, sending bulk mail, managing bounces etc – the primary use is to send your daily email.

This is how it works. You change your mail server’s smart-host to relay all mail through the mailPrimer servers. The mailPrimer SMTP server takes the email and breaks it down to bare-bones, then stores it in a SQL Server or My SQL database (or anything else because it uses hibernate). Another java service then polls the database, rebuilds the email and delivers it.

Because every business has different email requirements (trust me – they do!), mailPrimer has been built as a rules engine and everything it does to an email is controlled by rules.

Rules can be created for the server, account, sender, recipient, group of users etc and can be set to match the subject, body, headers, sender, recipient, recipient’s email client etc.

mailPrimer currently has 45 rules – doing everything from cleaning mhtml – automatically embedding images, changing the sender’s email domain, applying an html template, adding tracking etc and the rules are all database driven, so you can build your own rules by implementing a very simple API.

Rules are applied during pre-processing and post-processing, so it is fully flexible and very powerful. mailPrimer is also designed to run on multiple servers with a shared database. Each server is capable of delivering about 200 emails per minute – which is fairly slow – but it is doing a heck of a lot more than most SMTP servers!

mailPrimer has a ton of features built in – such as address validation before accepting emails (to avoid those nasty misdirected bounces) and also keeps its own global database of goodies so that it can apply the sender’s rules, but also consider the recipient’s preferences and capabilities.

If you’re interested in mailPrimer as a marketing solution – send an email to sales@mailprimer.com – but if you’re looking for a solid, commercially built and tested SMTP server that will allow you to really look good in front of your technical and marketing directors, then contact Calcium’s CEO Gael de Kerdanet (gael@calcium.co.nz).

mailPrimer is really leading the world with email marketing – and is another great example of an NZ software company going global.

Leave a Comment » | NZ Companies, Software | Permalink
Posted by Andrew