Meeting with Brandon, Steve and Alan to go over vendor aggregation project.

The three of us met and chatted about a project to create a master vendor catalog for a company. This is not system wide, but more of a master list for a subset of companies. The topics varied and we chatted about a bunch of different things. See attached for our notes and a small drawing that we did. I'll also include some other notes here below.

- Steve is happy where things are going!

- Human factors - if you don't have to think about something, it makes it easier - for example: push or pull the door handle. That could be easier than twisting, sliding, or some other complicated process. What do people expect to do or not do... lean in that direction. It requires less education and less frustration if it does what you think it should do.

- They talked about putting on guard rails and helping our users. The more we help our users, it actually creates "sticky users", which is a good thing, meaning that they like and use what we have to offer. The more they use it and depend upon it, the more they want to stay - thus a sticky user.

- Alan and Steve were reviewing a number of recent projects and how they are helping. Sometimes that is good to remind ourselves that we are doing good things. I hate to admit it, but often our job seems to be finding the problems, the tweaks that are needed, and constantly looking to refine things. Sometimes, all we can see is the "need to be fixed" stuff vs the stuff that is already fixed. Part of the job.

- We should would like to be able to help our clients see what is available and what new changes have been made. That is very tricky sometimes. It is amazing what our clients don't know (but could use, if they knew it).

- Customer support and offering other services. We are seeing a small shift in our model and leaning more towards support and other services.

- Currently, we are charging $100/hour for custom code work and $65/hour for training. At some point, we may need to increase those fees.

- We talked about the concept of kicking back to the core.

- This is the opposite of client fees, but at some point, we would like to up our own wages and/or pay rates. There was also some talk of future company allocations like computers and/or vehicles, and other perks and bonuses. Still a dream, but hopefully coming closer and closer to being realized.

- More project management with a focus on being and doing better project management. Helping our guys not spin their wheels and/or getting stuck. Keep things going and flowing.

- Steve and Alan were talking about having a special developer's meeting and talking about project management and see what the guys say or what ideas we can harness.

- Dealing with try storming... we may need to start in, get as far as we can, and then have someone else get in there to help finish things up. We would love for things to go full circle and be completed perfectly the first time, there is a cost to that as well. Keep playing the try storming game and be willing to circle back around as needed.

- Selling when the iron is hot... it really helps to sell things when there is some pain or a need.

- Talks about working off of bids and estimates vs hard fast quotes or fixed dollar amounts. Some of these things, we just don't know until we get in there and kick around a bit.

- Steve was saying, it may take a couple of years to make these transitions and changes. Sometimes we want it next week, next month, in a couple of months, etc. In reality, it may be a couple of years (plus), depending on what the changes and transitions are.

Lots more notes in the attached txt file with other meeting notes.