Basic Assignments
 
Options & Settings
 
Main Time Information
Color Code: Yellow
Assigned To: Stephen Berkenkotter
Created By: Stephen Berkenkotter
Created Date/Time: 3/8/2019 8:20 am
 
Action Status: Blank (new)
Show On The Web: Yes - (public)
Priority: 0
 
Time Id: 4464
Template/Type: Brandon Time
Title/Caption: Meeting with Kelly
Start Date/Time: 3/21/2019 3:00 pm
End Date/Time: 3/21/2019 5:15 pm
Main Status: Active

click to enlarge - photo by: Brandon Moore - Business structure and strategy from Kelly
 
 


Notes:

Meeting between Kelly, Steve, and Brandon. This was a discussion about the current state of adilas, wishes, hopes, disappointments, frustrations, needs, wants, and dreams.

Kelly has been involved since 2010. She has trained, trained our trainers, done tons of tech support, and opened up tons of accounts on her own. She would like to help drive the business but feels like she doesn't have much say.

Steve was talking about payment and commission structures (monies paid and owed to Kelly). Kelly wanted to know, what is our admin structure? Steve said, well, we have dependables - people who just help and work with adilas. Kelly would really like to see our organizational structure.

We are seeing different people and they have different skills in different places... How do we mix and blend those pieces?

Kelly proposed a basic model... see graphic. She really wants to build out a standard structure. She sometimes get very frustrated by having to provide customer support for things that we are adding and doing in the background.

Question: Is it the size of a company thing or is it personnel thing? Kelly came back and said - It sounds like you need a motor (a person), someone to help drive the ship per company. We are starting to see that there are some dependencies. Some of the known dependencies are good consultants and good developers. Steve said, our solution is a tool, we need to find those that want to use our tools, in whatever state (our system) it is in.

It kept coming back to different people being good at different things. Nobody can take adilas from a to z. Currently, it is a very loose model right now. Steve kept coming back to having a person who helps to drive the adilas implementation per corporation. Kelly wants it to be standardized. She really wants some kind of structure to be able to hand off to a company so that they can run with it. Currently, there are a lot of moving pieces.

From our side... every corporation runs slightly different. That makes it really hard to setup a perfect standard and/or structure. We currently are having some of the best success with people who really want to jump in try and love to learn things. Kelly really wants adilas to come up with a more standardized structure - do this, do this, do this, we recommend this, ok you're set. The easier that we can make it, the easier we can get more people on board.

Adilas - all data is live and searchable - we need more options to get at the data better. Kelly wants all of the pieces live and searchable. We have a good start, but there are certain places that really still need some loving. Kelly wants to know what our plan is? What about funding and going out and trying to raise monies? Currently, that door is not an option. We are really trying to stay within our means. We don't like owing money and living under that debt.

We talked about some of the challenges that keep pulling at us. Tons of projects and tons of demands. We also talked about accounts receivable, reoccurring credit cards, and constantly chasing payments. We talked about some of the trouble makers (hard clients and customers) and what to do with them. We talked about online bill pay stuff and how to get the monies that are owed to us quicker.

How do we market our product? New sales, marketing, word of mouth, referrals, etc. The power of a good consultant. Those who have a good consultant seem to be able to keep it going. Another place where we sometimes struggle are in the developer arena. Those skilled persons are very critical. That seems to be the squeeze point (trained people and who does what and how do our people know what expect and who to ask).

Sometimes you can oversell things by saying, you can do anything. Kelly would really like for the process to be more standard and structured. Basically, putting training wheels on the system. Maybe we need an outside party to really run with their own standard process of setting up a client. It may not come from us (right now). It would be so awesome, if we could get people going without a great consultant. Turn it into a step-by-step wizard and/or step them through the paces by virtually holding their hands (Dustin calls it guardrails). If it gets better and better and faster and faster, it will become more intuitive and will take less handholding will be required. Maybe show a 1,2,3,4 setup process and/or show checkboxes to show what is needed. Help guide the users through the process.

Some people don't want to spend the time to watch a video. They want to just guess and/or fake it. There are also some who just want to be shown, by a real person. They almost want it so, so easy, that it isn't funny. It seems to come down to who wants to fund and setup these services. There are tons of things that are needed, but who is going to build it and who is going to fund that development? It gets crazy. Sometimes it is so much, we almost overwhelm people. It would be nice if we could turn things off, turn other things on, and/or limit them in certain ways.

Who wants to set up their own processes, because everything keeps changing? It gets tricky. We need it, but who is going to do it? Plus, it keeps changing and changing and has cascading cause and effects. It seems to be never-ending.

Kelly wants to know who is driving this ship and who is taking care of the financials? We keep flexing and rolling with what comes.

We may need more exports to MS Excel and/or CSV. We need access to the underlying data. This could be datatables (prebuilt exports and sortable tables), this could be normal exports, etc.

If I were a lifer (in it forever - a lifer), how would that look and where would it go and how would I be a part of that? Steve would like to put adilas in a trust - no employees, just dependables. There will always need to be a caretaker and/or person(s) that help it keep going, but it could run light and get direction from those involved.

Does anybody know adilas all the way through? No, we don't have anybody that really knows it all the way through. Kelly wants to see things get more organized and/or stable. As a side note, we know that we need adilas university (training and support) and the adilas marketplace (adilas world - who is able to help and who can do what). Kelly feels like we need to drive in a direction (goal oriented) vs just reacting to the pull of what is happening organically. Currently, we have outside independents and they tend to max out and growth is somewhat slow. The word "evolution" kept coming in and how it relates to the business model.

Different areas... communication, training, design and user interface (look and feel), development (code and functionality), and other services that are needed and/or offered (open marketplace). We need to keep bringing up all of the pieces. Keep finding people who want to play and are able to play.

As we get more developers... some of the pieces become less stable (different flavors and/or code quality).

There are a lot of clients that are looking for a solution. At some point, they will take what they have to as they keep looking for something better. Interesting.

There is currently no handbook for adilas. There is a lack of training materials and structure. That is a known issue that we are facing.