CogBlog

Coghead@Work for the York Group

by Paul Salazar

A common use case for Coghead is to connect employees who are geographically dispersed but need real-time access to information as it is created. These companies need to share customer data, project status, or documents that are essential to the operation of the business but are not easily shared and managed using more typical methods such as email.

The York Group is a global consulting group focused on marketing strategy consulting. Their consultants are based in 25 countries and need to share information on customer pipeline and on customer projects. They need to store and share documents linked to specific projects. They have developed an application on Coghead because their needs are a great fit for Coghead. The application includes multiple collections which relate consultant to pipeline data and consultant to project information. The consultants do not need to load new software on their systems to use Coghead, and they can access their data and shared project data from anyplace at anytime.

Coghead & XP: Embracing Agile Development

by Sarah Franklin

In my sales engineering days at traditional software companies, I spent a lot of time with prospects and customers.  Many a conversation went as such:

Me: "Look at all the cool stuff this thing does." Customer: "Uhm... that's great.  But I really need it to do 'x'. Can your thing do x?" Me: "Not right now, but 'x' might be on our road map.  Let me check on it for you..."

After this conversation, I would proceed to have internal conference calls with product management, sales managers, and engineers, only to be told that the road map was fixed 6 months prior, and 'x' didn't make the cut.  But... the 'good news' was that I could get 'x' on the next product road map, and delivered next year.  I couldn't wait to tell that to the customer -- they were sure to be thrilled (yes, sarcasm intended...).

I have seen so many customers of traditional software companies take round pegs and pound them into square holes because of this exact situation.  They are so in need of a solution, that they just find a way to make things work.  They build custom scripts and infrastructure to surround something that doesn't do what it was supposed to do, and at the same time does all this "cool stuff" that they don't even care about.  They are forced to sit with baited breath until the next version is released in a years time -- fingers crossed that 'x' made the cut. 

Users & Developers: Applications & Pastries

by Greg Olsen

There was a time in the world of software when application developers and application users were entirely distinct and separate groups of people.  'Developers' were a small and select sect that possessed highly specialized skills, beyond the comprehension of the much larger and more ordinary group called 'Users'.   Their relationship to each other, resembled the relationship of a professional pastry chef to the people who consumed his pastries - developers cooked, users ate.

As we all know, the world of pastries isn't just about professional chefs, bakeries, and their customers.  Few people, in fact, are pure "users" of pastries.  Nearly everyone participates in some form in the development of pastries - e.g. home-made recipes, packaged cake & brownie mixes, brown and serve rolls, easy bake ovens, bread machines, etc. 

Today, the world of software is very comparable to the world of pastries.  Few people are exclusively pure end-users of applications.  Very basic forms of 'more than end user' activity include:  application skinning; the use of application add-ins, plug-ins, or extensions; dashboard/desktop configuration with widgets or gadgets; and custom map creation for games.   Between these relatively simple forms of application development and 'hard-core' software development performed by professional programmers, there exists an ever richer continuum of application development options to match an ever more diverse set of developer skill levels and needs.

Coghead@Work for Digital Bridge Academy

by Paul Salazar

Our developers start using Coghead for many different reasons, including supporting non-profit businesses.   Non-profits frequently cannot afford the expense and maintenance overhead of complex business applications, yet they need them to be more effective at running their business. One such developer is Christopher Shockey.

Chistopher Shockey has been an active Coghead developer, opening trial accounts, posting in the Coghead Support Forum, asking for help on Live Chat, and talking with our Application Engineers. Why? He wants to work with educational institutions across the United States to use Coghead for a range of information processing needs. In particular, Christopher has been working with the Digital Bridge Academy to support their efforts to bring at-risk youth to colleges in a supportive environment to reach their educational goals.

Coghead Announces Business Essentials

by Sarah Franklin

We are stepping up the Application Gallery to a new level today with our first application bundle - Business Essentials.  This bundle of applications helps SMBs manage and track critical information from projects to employee assets to vacation requests.  Designed with real world use in mind, the Business Essentials bundle packs the perfect amount of features.  And when complimented with Coglets, the apps provide an affordable, efficient mechanism for keeping your entire company organized and on the same page. 

The applications included in the bundle are: Asset Manager Company Directory Lead Manager Project Manager PTO Manager Recruiting Manager

In addition to these core applications, the bundle also includes a special dashboard application.  The dashboard provides a central location to access views of data that people need on a daily basis.  Users simply open the dashboard to see their leads, tasks, interviews, etc.  And, as with any Coghead application, the apps can be tailored to fit your specific needs without coding. 

The design of the bundle itself largely came from studying our own needs as a growing company.  Most companies - no matter what the size - have some mechanism in place to store core data such as financials or inventory, yet the daily items covered with Business Essentials are often left to spreadsheets and email.  I  remember when I worked at Sterling Commerce (a 2,000+ person company) just a year and a half ago, and we literally filled out a piece of paper that we snail mailed in to report PTO.  And, the only way I could ever see my PTO balance was on a quarterly deduction on my pay stub!

What I love about these apps most is that they are elegantly simple.  Sticking with the PTO example, there is  no need to over-engineer the process.  Coglets allow everyone to go to a web page to submit their PTO.  Managers can then click a single action to approve.  Looking at the dashboard gives a real time view into how much vacation time you have left.  Perfect.

Give it a test drive.  To help you get started, refer to the docs.  Guarantee you will get hooked. 

Coghead@Work

by Paul Salazar

How are people using Coghead at work? We see a very broad range of uses for Coghead among our customers and Affiliates. One of the more common situations where developers turn to Coghead are for business applications that need to coordinate amongst a geographically distributed work force. Webware applications are simple to access at any time from any place, something which has been an extremely challenging task for businesses with installed software applications on laptops and desktops that are spread around the world (or even just across a building!)

Recently I was working with one of our customers who is coordinating a small group of consultants based in three different parts of the United States. The customer needed to:

• Manage travel to client sites
• Develop and store proposals for each client
• Manage the workflow of client sessions, including pre and post visit sessions.
• Trigger emails to initiate subsequent steps in the process flow

The customer custom built this functionality and now wants to add a dashboard so she can get a simple visual update for the progress in a given client project.  She is having trouble extending the custom solution to accommodate this need, and now one of our Coghead Application Engineers is working with her to get her application migrated, and add the  dashboard functionality.

If you are developing an application and need some assistance, reach out to us at Coghead and ask for help. We have an active Forum in which you might find a post from someone who encountered the same issue and has shared a good idea how to get past it, or you can post your own topic and work with others toward a solution. If you are well on your way building Coghead applications, consider how you can share your work as an Affiliate.

I’d be delighted to hear more about how you are using Coghead. Please let me know by sending a note to info@coghead.com.

App Highlight: Simple CRM

Simple CRM (Customer Relationship Management) is a web-based application that allows you to manage your customers and sales process, including leads, contacts, opportunities, accounts and notes. Unlike other CRM applications Simple CRM is very easy to use and focuses on core elements of managing your sales cycle.

At the core of the application are Accounts. With Accounts you can manage the complete life cycles of your prospect and customers. Similar to the Accounts tab, the Lead tab provides the ability to assign, view and manage leads. From the leads tab you can also create a new opportunity, promote this lead to a contact or add a Note.With Notes, you can track activities at various levels; you can create a note for a lead, for an opportunity or for an account, or for any combination. This enables you to track and assign task and activities to make sure nothing falls through the cracks. Contact Management works similar to other tabs. There are two ways of adding new contacts. You can either create a new contact from an existing lead or you can just add a contact by clicking “New’ in the Contacts tab. Again, you can view all contacts that are associated with an account in the respective Accounts record. The Summary tab gives you an instant view into key metrics such as the list of new leads or the opportunities closing this month.  This view can very easily be modified to display other metrics that are more relevant to your business.

Assuming that you already have a data base or spreadsheet to manage your sales activities, you can easily import your records into Simple CRM using a CSV file. Similarly, you can also export data to EXCEL to create a weekly forecast or other reports.

Simple CRM is an application that is built for organizations that:

• Want to have an economic alternative to the other CRM solutions in the market
• Need core CRM functionality without the “bells and whistles” that hardly get used anyway
• Want to offer simplicity and ease of use to the sales people
• Need other applications such as Project Management, Expense Tracker, etc. that offer the same user interface and ease of use.

Every sales organization works differently and has different needs and requirements. That’s the reason why Coghead provides an easy way to customize Simple CRM to your unique needs. Here are just some ideas that illustrate what can be done: 

• Change names and labels of fields, collections, and views
• Add and change fields: Text, Drop-downs, grids, date picker, etc.
• Add and change business logic: Sending an alert when active Opportunity gets deleted, or
• Add more functionality and tabs: Order Management, Contract management, etc.
• Define custom workflow and alerts

Get started by downloading the Simple CRM app from the Gallery today.  Let us know how it works out for you.