This week MG started eating their own dogfood even more than before. If you take a look at the screen cap above you’ll see an email form and below that a blog sign up screen for the MG beta. This is important because the beta sign up form is now being generated from the MG application and the people who sign up are being directly entered into the app as email responders.

This little bit of functionality is great for email marketers or anyone who solicits participation via the web. You can essentially create forms then have the email addresses that they collect be put straight into the MG “CRM”. In addition to this, you’ll also be able to send out email marketing campaigns and have response entered in the system as a respondent to a specific email campaign. Its all powerful stuff especially when coupled with the rest of the MG feature set.

We need a name. Four names really. Okay, maybe five.

So far we’re stumped.

Every decision, every action has been the product of collaboration and passionate discussion, yet this elephant in the room seems to receive sporadic attention, or inattention. It’s the blank screen problem on a billboard scale.

Its seems that this one area of the project has been relegated to our quiet contemplative moments – almost as an afterthought.

This needs to change.

We need a rambunctious, semi-professional stream of consciousness type discussion that can put 50 to 100 names on the table in short order.

No filter. No judgments. Just ideas.

Nearly ten years ago a small team in a small San Francisco apartment launched “The End of Software” revolution.  The fundamental concept was that companies didn’t need to “own” software code and host it within their network.  Instead people could access the software remotely via a web browser at the office, at home, or anywhere there was an internet connection.  The type of software was a logical starting point - customer management software that the salesforce could access while on the road.  And Salesforce.com was born.

Over the last 10 years Salesforce.com has led the transformation for how people use software at work.  Today most corporate applications are accessed through a web browser and many of these are hosted outside the network by external companies.  Over time, the “End of Software” revolution evolved into a new trend of ”Software on Demand” or “Software as a Service” which allows companies to rent software rather than having to purchase it.

But to the users of the software, it is not a service.  It’s software.

The future of software needs to be more than just forms and databases, it should actively and purposely help educate people who use the software on best practices, industry standards, and success stories on how to achieve a task or manage a process more effectively.

As we develop our software we are looking at how we can further empower the people that use our software to improve their customer relationships by providing success stories, feedback on industry ratios and norms, inspirational stories, tips from experts, quality content from the web…

I think that is the kind of service that software companies should be providing, and I hope that people will begin to expect it from their software partners.

Surely we are past the “utility age” of computing.