BMA Marketing’s blog

I just created a new Yahoo Group that LongJump users can join so that we can share and learn.

A www.LongJump.com Sales Rep asked me to share my experiences with a
prospect that is considering investing more time and energy into the
LongJump platform.

CRM and hosted development platforms (like LongJump, SalesForce, Intalio,
etc.) are my passion - I continue to be dazzled by the incredibly powerful
yet inexpensive tools that are now available to businesses of any size. They
enable us to organize and manage enterprise data (prospect / customer /
order / marketing) and business processes (ex: what does your org do when
you get a lead?) that can then be leveraged and automated.

Here are my answers to the prospect's questions...

* How long have you used LongJump?

Since March 2008.

* How many users do you have?

8

I have trained double that number on how to login and use the system over
the past 1.5 years. This is important. I have never needed to create a user
manual or drag a user through any kind of complicated training. Navigation
is clean and quick. Learn one app and you can use all of them. Staff LIKE
LongJump. When I moved staff from a hosted spreadsheet service I was testing
over to LongJump, they made it a point to tell me how LongJump made them
more productive.

* How stable has the system been (errors, down-time, etc.)?

Very stable. I have seen the service go down (unplanned) a few times (maybe
3?) in the past 1.5 years. The outages have only ever been minutes (not more
than 10) so system problems have never affected our ability to get our work
done.

* How much customization have you done (fields, objects, applications,
etc.)?

Hundreds of hours. I have modified the existing objects (ex: the Account and
Opportunity tabs) by adding fields and triggers, and have created many
custom applications (a collection of tabs) containing custom tabs to
organize and manage my business processes within LongJump. Exciting stuff.

Customization is what lead me to LongJump. In March 2008, as I understood
it, Salesforce was going to charge me for customizations beyond 5 "tabs". I have since created around 15 custom apps, each containing many custom
tabs, so I would have exceeded Salesforce's 5 tab limit quickly (costing
additional dollars). There are no customization limits or extra costs (other
than data storage costs) in LJ.

A couple of custom app success stories are...

- Converting a paper+Excel based marketing service that builds date driven
events for our clients into a LongJump powered custom app. My national staff
connect from their homes, complete their tasks, with the app then handling
many tasks (email, fax, etc.) via automation that was once done manually.

- I moved a direct mail marketing service originally developed in MS Access
+ Outlook to a custom LongJump app. The processing power of the LongJump
platform solved a huge bottleneck issue. I can now send thousands of pieces
of mail in one click. Before, my locally run solution could only process a
few hundred pieces per hour and would tie up internal hardware and network
resources.
* Any limitations you have experienced?

1. Storage rates need to improve. Price was just cut in half...now $25 per
50MB - and that's still ridiculous. Hard to understand this rate when I can
buy 1TB USB drive for under $200. Salesforce now offers 1 GB min for all
accounts to cover data and files. LongJump needs to match the market. 2. Are you an MS Access or SQL database user? Joining tabs within views is
not supported. Gets in my way. You can do 3 table (aka object) join in
reports, so that's some relief, but I would like my "relational data"
to...relate, easily. 3. A feature to copy the Data Policy (DP) object. The DPs are my favorite
part of Long Jump. Using plain English, business users can but the records
to work. Automate updates, send merged emails, force data integrity checks.
Huge feature. DPs let you leverage and automate your data. So...I now create
DPs often. And that's a problem since they can't be copied. Imagine having
to recreate a complex Word doc from scratch each time. I have a request in
to Support. 4. Data export has a glitch that needs to be addressed: exporting records
that contain double quotes (ex: html email body text) breaks the outputted
CSV file since LongJump only offers to use double quotes as text delimiters.
I have been told the next version will address this. 5. I have not found a LongJump user forum. I have used forums to learn how
to develop on other platforms. I have not spent much time searching for
users since LongJump is easy to learn and Support is excellent. 6. BPM (Business Process Management) tools. I have not spent time using
LongJump's Workflows which look like a good first step on creating and
managing and running Business Processes (BP) graphically. Based on what I
have read, the workflows are limited to the data (records) in one tab, which
I expect will block my creativity when it comes to leveraging my data. I may
want a BP that updates an Account with revenue recorded in the Opportunity
tab, and then goes on to mine related data in the Contact tab and other
custom tabs...driving a series of follow-up events (marketing, cross
selling, customer satisfaction).

* Have you used tech support and how responsive have they been?

Amazing. Best Support I have experienced in 20 years. The team has made
changes to the system based on my requests...kind of mind blowing. Example: I have a solution (this might be of use to your org) that allows me
to create emails and send them to a service that converts them into a paper
letters (imagine - I send thousands of pieces of mail with no Mail Dept and
no batching...direct from email to printed letter to Post Office to
recipient). This process requires a long subject line that contains the
target address. The LongJump system did not allow more than 100 characters
in the subject line (an arbitrary limit). I explained what I wanted to do
and why, and the Support Team worked with the Development team to make the
change to allow more characters. Your Sales Rep could probably pull a report on the many questions that
Support has provided to me and feature requests that they delivered shortly
after I requested.

* Overall impression of LongJump CRM system?

Easy to try. User cost is inexpensive and monthly pay-as-you-go was a great
fit for this small biz. Short learning curve. Quickly learned how to
customize and program with no code. Our Marketing and Sales activities use
the CRM, while our Production and Operations are now powered by our own
custom apps.

* If you had to do it over, what would you do differently?

I would have made more time to explore and use the built in email marketing
tools (Vertical Response). I never got around to using this excellent built
in marketing tool until recently, and instead was focused on sending email
using another (less effective) method.

Crazy - right as I ready to send process my second project, the LongJump CRM had a problem and stopped displaying hosted images. Good example of the problems you can hit using a hosted platform. Support responded to my ticket in minutes and had it fixed in an hour. Impressive.

I just accomplished an exciting objective this morning where I created an "app" (as in "there's an app for that" - aka application) in my CRM (http://www.longJump.com) to handle the process of creating and sending US Postal mail for my "Birthday Party Sales Mailing" service clients.

I created a crude system using MS Access and Outlook about a year ago to run the then new service on. Now that I have signed many clients, I find my original solution does not scale. A part of my paper printing and direct mail sending process uses email.

How exciting that in one day I was able recreate my invention and make use of my CRM's incredibly powerful system capabilities (ex: the CRM can send thousands of emails per MINUTE while I can send a few hundred per HOUR), eliminating massive bandwidth limits that my own "home-office" grade equipment presented.

Wow - I had no idea that I have had the same Hotmail address for 10 years!

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This gives us something to think about with all our new electronic
technology.

GPS

A couple of weeks ago a friend told me that someone she knew had their car
broken into while they were at a football game. Their car was parked on the
green which was adjacent to the football stadium and specially allotted to
football fans. Things stolen from the car included a garage door remote
control, some money and a GPS which had been prominently mounted on the
dashboard.

When the victims got home, they found that their house had been ransacked
and just about everything worth anything had been stolen.

The thieves had used the GPS to guide them to the house. They then used the
garage remote control to open the garage door and gain entry to the house.
The thieves knew the owners were at the football game, they knew what time
the game was scheduled to finish and so they knew how much time they had to
clean out the house. It would appear that they had brought a truck to empty
the house of its contents.

Something to consider if you have a GPS - don't put your home address in it.
Put a nearby address (like a store or gas station) so you can still find
your way home if you need to, but no one else would know where you live if
your GPS were stolen.

MOBILE PHONES

This lady has now changed her habit of how she lists her names on her mobile
phone after her handbag was stolen. Her handbag, which contained her cell
phone, credit card, wallet... Etc...was stolen.

20 minutes later when she called her hubby, from a pay phone telling him
what had happened, hubby says 'I received your text asking about our Pin
number and I've replied a little while ago.'

When they rushed down to the bank, the bank staff told them all the money
was already withdrawn. The thief had actually used the stolen cell phone to
text 'hubby' in the contact list and got hold of the pin number. Within 20
minutes he had withdrawn all the money from their bank account.

Moral of the lesson:

Do not disclose the relationship between you and the people in your contact
list.

Avoid using names like Home, Honey, Hubby, Sweetheart, Dad, Mom, etc....

And very importantly, when sensitive info is being asked through texts,
CONFIRM by calling back.

Also, when you're being text by friends or family to meet them somewhere, be
sure to call back to confirm that the message came from them. If you don't
reach them, be very careful about going places to meet 'family and friends'
who text you.

1. The average and median age of company founders when they started their current companies was 40.

2. 95.1 percent of respondents themselves had earned bachelor’s degrees, and 47 percent had more advanced degrees.

3. Less than 1 percent came from extremely rich or extremely poor backgrounds

4. 15.2% of founders had a sibling that previously started a business.

5. 69.9 percent of respondents indicated they were married when they launched their first business. An additional 5.2 percent were divorced, separated, or widowed.

6. 59.7 percent of respondents indicated they had at least one child when they launched their first business, and 43.5 percent had two or more children.

7. The majority of the entrepreneurs in the sample were serial entrepreneurs. The average number of businesses launched by respondents was approximately 2.3.

8. 74.8 percent indicated desire to build wealth as an important motivation in becoming an entrepreneur.

9. Only 4.5 percent said the inability to find traditional employment was an important factor in starting a business.

10. Entrepreneurs are usually better educated than their parents.

11. Entrepreneurship doesn’t always run in the family. More than half (51.9 percent) of respondents were the first in their families to launch a business.

12. The majority of respondents (75.4 percent) had worked as employees at other companies for more than six years before launching their own companies.

Which of the above surprises you the most and alters your mental model of what entrepreneurs are like?

From...

On Startups blog