Steve was showing us a small demo of some of his tiered pricing out in ecommerce. We had Kelly come on and gave him some feedback. It is literally crazy to hear what they, the users and consumers, really want. It gets super crazy and they want a multi-flipping gymnastic display with super easy functional and beautiful at the same time. The deeper we go, the more things are really flowing and trending towards more configuration settings and then being able to display things in a really simple format. Another thing that I am seeing is the need for specialized and specific interfaces, per business vertical. It is crazy how much people want and how quickly they want it. That makes for a tough mix.

Creating a layered approach seems to work better. The user experience is huge. On that same level, we are seeing a growing need for a developer to code it and a designer to help with flow and the user experience.

As Kelly and Steve got deeper in the ecommerce demo, they, were asking for more searchability, more multi select, more JavaScript show/hide filters and menus, etc. They want the moon and even demand it. Kelly would like to do a different session where they, (Steve, Kelly, and Dustin) go in and do a look around on other ecommerce sites and get ideas of good/bad/ugly and then make a plan from there.

These are some questions that are going on in my head, who is coordinating all of these decisions? How is it all going to work and play out? Who is funding what and who is driving what functions and features? Assuming that we have the funding, who is going to plan, design, and code it? Huge demands and huge questions.

The conversation started rolling over into complaints about look and feel, server up time and/or perceived up time, and other perceptions for the users. They were talking about levels and costs to get to those levels. It then got into a discussion between web, on-sight servers, software, hardware, hybrid solutions, apps, mobile, etc. What are the expectations and what is expected?

Kelly wants us to get pricing on what it would cost for this and that. Steve came back and was talking about how the system keeps growing and developing and who is going to pay for this and/or that. Kelly then was talking about costs and choices that need to be presented to the clients. If you want this and that, you need to pay for this and that. If you only want a smaller set, you would hope that you only need to play for that piece.

Steve was talking about the cost of, even say, your worst employee? It most likely will be $2,000 to $5,000 per month. What is the cost of the adilas system? Say maybe $200 - $400 per month. There is a known disconnect, the adilas system provides tons of functionality, but yet, the price is itsy bitsy tiny and therefore sometimes perceived as less important. The conversation then turned to how do we support the bigger clients and what are their needs.

Wayne popped in and was reporting on servers and server stability. FTP and FTPS - normal and/or secure file transfer protocol issues. He had some questions on how do we keep the servers up to date, synced up, and how do we manage the custom code (things that are different per server or per corporation). Custom code is somewhat of a wildcard piece and/or variable per server. We talked about core adilas code and custom code and how they relate and interact. We also talked about ways to manage custom code and who has what code and/or reports (we need a system of recording who has what and what it does). We have had requests on the client side - am I running custom code? We have also had requests on the tech support side - are they running custom code? We have also had some developers ask the same question - are they running custom code? Kinda interesting - lots of different angles to cover and what not.

I got a call from Bank of America to talk about some term loans and/or revolving business credit lines. I was on the phone for 20 minutes and the rep is going to be sending us some information. They have a couple nice looking products that have way better interest rates as compared with Kabbage and other high interest options.

Steve and I were talking about the future of software of a service is - we do build a product that has as many permissions and features as we can see to solve the needs. The future is that the clients want to customize the results and/or the output. They all want some kind of specialized output. Each client wants to mix and blend the variables in a different way. This could be seeing the data in a certain way (report and/or dashboards) or they have a slightly different process (add/subtract certain steps). Steve is seeing that there is a cost to switch systems, so we are hoping that our clients have basically, choose your platform and then invest in your solution to make it almost your own. Custom solutions that fit people's needs and how they want to play.

Sometimes with bigger clients, you actually get beat-up more and they still may not be happy. We need to find the clients that are happy with us and even bring us donuts... :) We want to find the correct level for us and our company. Bigger is not always better. From Shannon - it is an abundant model. That is awesome.

Picking your battles and multi-concept decision making. That is quite the game. Fun, but very challenging. Question - who wants to play? Great, let's play. Lots of indicators, you just have to make decisions according to those indicators. Adilas is a giant idea farm. We will keep building and breaking things. That is somewhat of our model. We want to help businesses succeed. Those who want to play with that model, we love it, let's play. On the financial side, we are so glad that we don't owe anybody huge amounts of money. That is freeing to the mind and the soul. Good stuff.

This is on a different note, we would really like to circle back around and see where we are at on the accounting side. Most of our current efforts are still focused on operations and operational flow and process. There is some huge potential for future growth in that area. We need to keep working on and refining our plan. The other area that could really use some loving is the user interface and the look and feel. There is a constant progression from one thing to the other. That is fun and exciting to see and even revisit those pieces.

Steve jumped back into a recap of where he started with the coding and development side - simple HTML and web stuff on the old steps to success. As you get deeper and deeper, you keep needing to step outside and get deeper in the complexity and background pieces. Lots of moving pieces under the hood, but it looks super simple on the outside.

 Steve and I are realizing that we can't do this whole project by ourselves. We have a great little team and we are even refining things within that model. That is exciting. It is the team that wins the battle, not an individual. We are learning tons and tons about the software as a service (SaaS) model. Our plan it to keep going at the current pace, keep building, and keep listening. Our plan is to run as fast as we are able within the bounds of not running faster than we are able.

We are happy to keep building up the core pieces. We are seeing numerous outside parties that are catching the vision and building out more and more custom stuff.