So the song goes “I don’t like Mondays”® (credit: Bob Geldof)….

After a weekend of development and code improvements, we were unable to get Dex through our internal tests to release it into beta - as planned for this week.  We ran into several roadblocks, and we held a long team meeting to discuss the opportunity vs. risk of launching the product to our beta users without some of the key, mind-blowing features.  In the end, we agreed that it was more important to get it done right than to get it done fast (this is me eating my words!).  This means disappointing all of the people who signed up for our beta program (our most interested audience).  And it also means a very disappointed and disheartened development team.  When everyone’s pulling all-nighters and working through weekends to hit a date, and you realize that the product just isn’t where it needs to be, its a real blow to morale and enthusiasm.

So Monday morning and the decision is made to push back the launch of our Beta program (emails to everyone who signed up to follow shortly).

But Monday gets worse…

Later in the evening I receive an email from a lawyer representing Dex Media (not to be confused with MediaDex) - who run Dex Knows, an online yellow pages site.  They believe that our use of the name dex “is likely to cause confusion and is an infringement of the DEX® mark”, and that we should change our product name immediately “before further and substantial damage results from [our] continued infringement of the DEX® mark”.

Apparently Dex Media feels that our relationship management product resembles their online yellow pages website and magazine publishing business enough that we risk causing confusion and could benefit from the goodwill they have accumulated with their customers.

Dex insurance: ok.
Dex skateboard: ok.
Dex software (software?): ok.
Dex supply chain logistics (software again?!?): ok.
Dex multimedia (media?): yup.
Medical equipment, clothing line, Imaging, Concrete work…

OK, so maybe we’re not so original, but I think its pretty unreasonable to say our product is anything like a yellow pages company.

So now we have a choice to make.  Do we try to make our case ($$$) or do we throw away all of our goodwill and time invested in an unoriginal but strong brand position?

At the very least, at least Monday’s over.

This afternoon I’ll be demoing Dex for the first time, and after a couple of late nights and a lot of last minute edits by Creighton, I’m confident that Dex will give a great performance.

It’s great to see many of the key differentiators that we have been discussing over the last 4 months come to life, like the relationship meter and business opportunity rating with the underlying algorithm / scoring system;  a network health monitoring screen that helps find potential duplicates, incomplete records, and unassigned contacts; and a dashboard that suggests who I should be following up with based on a combination of my relationship strengths, my last contact, and business opportunity.

It’s also exciting to see Andrew’s design come to life.

I’ll be sure to post a short video before the end of the week of this first beta.

Wish us luck!

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.

The Alpha version of our CRM system (codenamed “Blackbook”) was released last week and I’m really excited about this initial build.

This first build represents the skeleton of the application with the key data components.  There’s a lot of great functionality in this first build including:

• Dashboard Charts
• Company and Person management
• CSV imports (worked with 38,000 records!)
• Deal Management
• Custom Fields
• Task & Activity Management
• File upload and commenting

The next phase will focus on improving usability design (finding records easily with a lot of content), contact grouping, campaign management, and multiple integration points (forms, web, email).  I’m looking forward to receiving a lot more feedback over the next couple of weeks.

As always, if you’re interested in testing the alpha version (warts and all!) sign up here.

The one frustrating thing about working with social media companies that is that alot of them are not very social when it comes to customer service. Setting up a simple Linkedin group for Mercury Grove is a great example of this. It begins with filling in a short form that describes the group you are setting up. Ok simple enough. I fill it in and am told that my group will be reviewed shortly and to stay tuned. I thought that was interesting at the time since it introduced a social component to the sign up. That means a "real person" was going to review what I submitted and make a decision about it.

I was really surprised when a day later I got an email saying that the group was rejected. The email was from a "real person"and said that the group was rejected because…

LinkedIn reserves the right not to accept applications from groups that do not have an existing member base or affinity or that do not serve a business or professional purpose.

Come on, I’m creating a group based around a company that wants to connect with current and potential new clients - how does this not serve a business or professional purpose. So I thought ok, at least I have someone that I can write back to and plead my case with. So I put together a nicely worded email explaining again what we are doing and that it serves both a business and professional purpose. The response was automated saying that a service professional will be in touch sometime and that my Question Reference number is 080739-001073. So much for social.

Today marks the end of the first month.  We’re now one quarter of the way into our “project” to launch four apps in four months.  We’ve spent weeks preparing strategy, building wireframes, discussing tactics, and creating code (lots of code).  Specifically we have:

• Defined the team and roles and responsibilities
• Defined 80% of product specs through our software design methodology
• Defined a launch strategy
• Developed 80% of the code for one application
• Refined our existing Collaboration software (to launch next week)

It’s a great start, but we’re still short on some core areas:

• Finalized Project Plan 
• Brand platform definition
• Marketing copy

Our new site will launch before the end of the week and we’ll start our communication blitz next week - which will add a lot more pressure to the team.  Already everyone is running at 100% on various projects - the next three months will require clearly defined deliverables and first-class prioritization from everyone for us to achieve our goal of “Outrageous Success”.

The other ingredient we’ll need is a lot more positive momentum.  A groundswell.  I believe that success - in business and in life - is based on momentum.  It’s hard to stop something that is accelerating quickly, or on a steep decline.

One month into this project I am optimistic, but we really need to accelerate.  Now it’s time to regroup, go public, and continue moving - faster.