ProWorks Team Blog

ProWorks Blog Has Moved!

2009-06-01T08:45:00.000-07:00

In an effort to allow for more customization and better team blog collaboration, the ProWorks Blog has moved.

You will find us blogging more about things we have learned, products we like, and tips & tricks. The perspective will be varied: design, programming, marketing, social media, and other similar topics will be covered.

Hope to see you on the new blog!

http://www.proworks.com/blog

Comparing E-Newsletters and Blogs

2009-01-02T11:42:00.000-08:00

A business blog I like to keep an eye on is called eROI Days, written by Ryan Buchanan, the CEO of eROI. I like it for two reasons. The first is that eROI is an Oregon based company specializing in e-marketing or online marketing. The second is that I was very impressed with Ryan when he visited to Corvallis for SpeakerLunch. You can view Ryan Buchanan's SpeakerLunch presentation here.

When considering the business value of e-newsletters and blogs I think its interesting to note that a marketing firm specializing in email campaigns maintains five blogs and one of them is written by the CEO. I imagine eROI would say that both are very useful business tools for and I would agree.

But what is the difference between blogs and e-newsletters? How are they used and what kind of skill and effort is involved? With limited time and resources you may have to choose between the two. How do you choose?

Aa side-by-side comparison between e-newsletters and blogs from a business perspective might be a good place to start.

	E-Newsletter	Blog
Conversation	1-way	2-way
Difficulty	Can be technically challenging	As easy as creating Word document
Writing skill	higher quality writing is expected	Casual writing style expected
Multiple writers	Yes, must be coordinated and integrated	Different writers can post independently of each other
Spam	Can contribute to inbox clutter	Reader visits a URL to read
Delivery	Entire content is delivered by email	Readers can subscribe to updates
Publishing schedule	Usually fixed	More variable
Up to date	Updates can be old depending on the publish date	Posts can be created in real time during after an event
Searchable (with Google)	No	Yes
Social bookmarking/sharing	No	Absolutely (Del.icio.us, Digg, StumbleUpon)
Viral marketing	No	Yes
Past content available	No	Yes
Revenue source	Not normally	Ad revenue in common
Cost	Software or service licensing	Available for free
Track-able	Limited to tracking images and link clicks	Web stats are easy and free (Google analytics)
Plug-ins / widgets/ Flash	No	Yes
Display video	No	Yes
Display images	Many email viewers turn off images by default	Yes, just a like web page
Custom design	Limited	Unlimited
Semantic Web standards	No	Yes
Categorized	No	Yes, by tags, labels and date
Data/Info from other sources	Manually	Automatically via RSS and APIs

What do you think? What are your experiences? Have I missed anything critical?

Technology Tips for the Corvallis Benton Chamber Newsletter

2008-12-18T11:46:00.000-08:00

The Corvallis Benton Chamber Coalition published a list of tips I created for using technology in the office. It wouldn't be fair of me not to mention that I learned or observed most of this stuff from my super-smart-co-workers in the ProWorks think tank over the years.

Here is a copy of the article from December 18th issue of the CBCC Communique (sorry, there isn't a static page available to direct to).

FROM THE SELF-TAUGHT TECHIE
Tips on Using Technology in the Office
By Loyan Roylance

Keep your area uncluttered
You've probably read about keeping your desk tidy, but this includes your computer screen too. Reduce your open applications/browsers to items that you are currently working on. If you aren't using it, it's a distraction. It is also wasting your computer's resources and possibly bogging it down. If you aren't using it, close it. Don't just minimize it, close it.

Disconnect when you have to
Have a project due in 3 hours? Try turning off Outlook, your phone, twitter, Instant Messenger and all of the other things that are very useful but can interrupt and distract you from your most pressing task. Research suggests that email can drop your IQ by as much as 10 points. Thankfully it's temporary (whew!).

Work locally when you can
Your computer performs best when it is using applications and files that are stored on it. Remote files and applications can be used by your computer but can also slow you down. Create a local work folder on your computer and copy what you need from the remote location. When you are done, update the remote file if needed and delete the "working" copy. If you are using a file sharing tool like SharePoint, even better.

Manage files to outlast you
Name and manage your files as if you are going to retire tomorrow. Can your replacement understand your file names? Are your files located in logically named folders? Avoid the trap of creating a crazy mess of files all over the place. Creating a bunch of unneeded duplicates can leave you and others asking "which copy is the right one?"

Share nicely with others
Have you ever received an email attachment that your couldn't open? Be aware of using obscure files types if you are collaborating with others. Many applications will save files in a proprietary format. But the good ones will allow you to save in a format that is industry standard or "open standard". Plain text (.txt), Word(.doc), PDF(.pdf), Excel(.xls) and JPEG images (.jpg) are generally easily sharable. If you are using Microsoft Office 2007 you are "out in front" of a lot of people and will need to be careful.

Carefully invest in new technology
Not all software is created equal. For each problem solved by software there are as many problems than can be created. If you are going to integrate a new tool into the way you work make sure that it is the right choice or it will cost you time and money in the end. If you are selecting software for others make sure you include them in the decision process. Trying to force feed new technology onto staff can be painful for everyone.

Take advantage of web tools (especially the free ones)
Don't think your business needs the web? Do your customers use the web? Do your suppliers use the web? Do your competitors? There are tons of great tools available and many don't cost a dime. There are innovative web tools that exist to help with just about every business process imaginable. How do you find them? See the next item below but this can get you started: http://www.webware.com/html/ww/100/2008/winners.html.

Google is your unpaid personal trainer and research staff
When you have a question about anything, try Google. How can I use Word to print an envelope label? I have no idea but I just searched Google for "envelope Word" and the third result is a step by step instruction on how to do it.

Don't be afraid to ask for specialized technical help
We all get stumped sometime and can use some outside help. Consider asking another company for some specialized advice. I recently consulted with Peak regarding some technical issue and they helped me out as a simple favor. Acknowledge the favor! Write a formal thank you letter that they can use. Tell other people how someone helped you. That stuff gets around.

Use technical support when needed
I like to figure things out myself as much as the next person. But if I use a lot of time, I'm costing myself or my business money. That's when I consider using technical support. Many software providers will give free support to a limit. Even a paid support plan can be worth it if it saves enough time and effort.

Try to be smarter than you were yesterday (or at least last week)
I love Stephen Covey's analogy about "sharpening the saw". Don't work so hard that don't have time to sharpen your saw. A dull saw just makes you work harder when you really want to work smarter. Try to learn something new about technology each day. Read a technical blog post. Spend a few minutes exploring Windows hotkeys or try out some of the fancy advanced functions in Excel. It will make you more productive and happy in the long term.

Don't be modest
Isn't it awesome when you learn something new? It feels even better when you share it with your co-workers. I prefer to run around my office with my arms raised and declare that "I am a Genius!" I suppose an email would also suffice depending on your personal style. Become a resource of information for your team.

ProWorks Loves Partnering With Peak

2008-12-02T09:12:00.000-08:00

Peak Internet is awesome. For the past two years Peak has provided ProWorks with server hosting, a high speed internet connection, and beyond-the-call technical assistance. Recently, ProWorks has been collaborating with Peak to build custom web applications for clients. We are ecstatic about our relationship with Peak.

Peak's Service
We initially selected Peak to replace our previous host provider because of service issues we were consistently having with them. They are a large well known host and appear less costly up front. But the amount of time were spending solving problems was ultimately costing us more.

ProWorks decided to try a smaller, local host provider and we have been happy with that decision. As a web developer, we require some pretty focused and high level server support. Peak's staff is technically qualified and given us an amazing level of personal attention.

Peak's People
ProWorks has most closely worked with Michael Laport, Peak's Director of Marketing and Dave Placko the Chief Technical Officer at Peak. Both of these individuals have been great to work with. Michael and Dave are honest, professional and very accessible. They have personally gone above-and-beyond to create a great relationship with ProWorks.

The fact that Michael shares our love for the Beaver's is a bonus.

Creating Business
Fortunately our development services have fit nicely with Peaks and we have been able to collaborate on some custom web development projects. ProWorks has gained some new customers this way and for this we are very thankful to Peak.

Based on our experience I would recommend any local area business to consider Peak for any internet related needs.

ProWorks at High Tech After Hours in Corvallis

2008-11-11T11:07:00.000-08:00

ProWorks is a Grand sponsor of the High Tech After Hours event this year. HTAH is a local networking and expo event focusing on high tech and traded sector companies in Corvallis and surrounding areas in Oregon. Roughly fifty high tech businesses will showcase the newest ideas and technologies being developed in the Willamette Valley.

This year's Keynote Speaker is Peter Adkinson, founder of Wizards of the Coast and Hidden City Games and owner of Gen Con. Peter is an entrepreneur with a Computer Science degree who turned his passion for gaming into a successful company, sold it to Hasbro and went into semi-retirement. That basically sounds like the dream of every person attending HTAH to me.

Plus he helped give us Magic: The Gathering. Oh, don't pretend you you don't know what a Happless Researcher is.

ProWorks is going to try something new this year at our table based on the concept of Visual Thinking. The most common question heard at conferences and expositions is, "What do you guys do?" As a software development company it can be challenging to communicate the answer to that question effectively in less than ten minutes. "We make software" doesn't quite give us what we do the justice it deserves. So we have created a six foot drawing to visually communicate what we do.

Our senior developer Jason Prothero discovered a book called The Back of the Napkin which describes how Visual Thinking can help communicate more powerfully than traditional business presentations. At ProWorks we have found simple visuals to be very useful when trying to understand complex ideas and problems. We thought we would share this concept at HTAH. Plus I imagine the giant hand drawn backdrop will stand out on the crowd!

The 6th Annual High Tech After Hours will be held on November 13th from 1:00pm until 8:00pm at the CH2M Hill Alumni Center located on the OSU campus across from Reser Stadium.

ProWorks Assisting Money Tree Software in Corvallis

2008-04-02T11:52:00.001-07:00

ProWorks has partnered with Money Tree Software to provide IT services on a consulting basis. We will leverage our ASP.NET and Microsoft SQL Server expertise to assist Money Tree with their IT needs.

Money Tree is a Corvallis based provider of financial and retirement planning software used by planners for over twenty years. Their commercial products include Silver Financial Planner and TOTAL Planning Suite.

ProWorks is located in the same building as Money Tree in the University Plaza. "We are happy to be able to help our neighbors out. Money Tree had a need which happened to fall right in line with our software development skill set," said Jason Prothero a ProWorks senior developer. "We do a lot of consulting work for federal, county and state government agencies. It is nice to be able to help someone in Corvallis."

Geographic Data and Analsysis

2008-01-24T09:51:00.000-08:00

ProWorks has partnered with 3Di West in Eugene to deliver an online mapping application called the Canyon County Parcel Viewer. The viewer allows users to locate tax parcels within the Canyon County, Idaho and view related information about the parcel gathered from different data sources. The Canyon County Parcel Viewer is featured in the ARCNews, a mapping and geographic information system (GIS) technology magazine. The viewer offers a free service as well as a fee-based service which delivers more advanced searching and reporting features.

Partnering with 3Di West, who are mapping and GIS experts allowed us to leverage our database and reporting expertise in a new field. The experience working with 3Di West has been great and the project has been successful. In fact, a similar system was requested by Bonneville County, Idaho and has been deployed.

Data Mining for Flight Safety Gets Notoriety

2008-01-14T11:27:00.000-08:00

The Washington Post published an article about how data mining has been improving airline safety titled "Avoiding Plane Crashes By Crunching Numbers, Data Mining Helps Identify Subtle Flaws". Staff writer Del Wilber's piece points out that data mining is part of the new era in the airlines industry, which has been without a major U.S. commercial aircraft crash since August 2006.

For ten years ProWorks has been helping major airlines to improve flight safety through secure safety reporting systems, performance monitoring systems and FAA approved flight operations quality assurance (FOQA) systems mentioned in the article.

These intensive large scale projects are generally unnoticed by the general public outside of the airlines industry. It is understandable, considering the nature of an effective safety system is to avoid abnormal and potentially hazardous events.

Currently, ProWorks is working on the Distributed National FOQA Archive (DNFA). The FAA managed DNFA system is designed to analyze data to identify trends from a single aggregated source of flight data and safety reports. Flight safety analysts are able to access the data while the integrity, security, and confidentiality of the original data sources is maintained.

Thank you to Del Wilber and The Washington Post for noticing how data mining is contributing to the absence airlines flight safety in the news media.

Reduced Product Prices for 2008

2008-01-02T11:03:00.000-08:00

ProWorks has significantly reduced the cost of all product licenses for 2008. This includes our popular line of graphing tools, the Flipper Graph Control and Flipper Graph ASP, our .NET line of charting tools, Chart for Windows and Chart for ASP.NET and the unique Flipper CAD Control drawing tool.

New Product License Prices:

Flipper Graph Control $249
Flipper Graph ASP $449

Flipper CAD Control $349

Chart for Windows $299
Chart for ASP.NET $499

Visit our product pages for more detail about each product. Fully functional trial versions of each product are available for free download. Please be our guest and give one of our developer tools a spin.

ProWorks a High Tech After Hours Gold Sponsor

2007-08-22T11:20:00.000-07:00

ProWorks Corporation will sponsor the 5th Annual High Tech After Hours on Oct 11th at the CH2M Hill Alumni Center on the Oregon State University campus in Corvallis. The event is a showcase of the latest technologies developed by businesses in the Corvallis area.

Greg Merten, a senior consultant with Conversant will present "A Tale of Two Leaders" at the event. As a Vice President and General Manger with Hewlett Packard, Greg lead the growth of inkjet supply operations from 75 to 10,000 people worldwide. With Conversant, Greg helps business leaders apply communication, relationships, and learning for the benefit of their organizations. I have been fortunate enough to have spoken in depth with Greg on few occasions and I have never been less than impressed. He is one of those guys that emanates positive energy and success.

ProWorks will unveil our own latest technology at the event. We don't want to give too much away beforehand, but I will say ProWorks has created a very cool text mining web service that will be very interesting to anyone that spends any time researching prospects, customers and partners.

ProWorks has been based Corvallis for over ten years and we are very proud to be a part of the high-tech sector here. ProWorks is a member of the Corvallis branch of the Software Association of Oregon. ProWorks senior developer, Jason Prothero serves on the Corvallis SAO board as Vice President.

The High Tech After Hours sponsors include:
Corvallis Benton Chamber Coalition
SAO Corvallis Chapter
The Business Enterprise Center
Fulcrum Drive
Marvell Semiconductor
ProWorks Corporation
S&D Engineering Solutions
OSU College of Engineering
OSU College of Business

ProWorks Recieves 2007 Award for Excellence in Technology Transfer from the Federal Laboratory Consortium

2007-05-24T10:08:00.000-07:00

ProWorks President Gary Prothero recieved a letter of congratulations from Samuel W. Bodman, the Secretary of Energy and head of the United States Department of Energy for being named a recipient of the 2007 Award for Excellence in Technology Transfer. The award presented by the Federal Laboratory Consortium recognizes the outstanding accomplishment of transferring the ProWorks co-developed software named the The Morning Report to the commercial marketplace.

The Morning Report is an R&D 100 Award winning airline safety tool. The application analyzes hundreds of commercial aircraft in-flight data variables, such as speed, wing angle, equipment status, and engine temperature from thousands of flights a day. The result is a daily report that allows the rapid identification of anomalies, and the prevention of possible accidents. Delivering aviation experts with the reports generated by The Morning Report will greatly improve the safety of flight operations.

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) in collaboration with Battelle, NASA-Ames, ProWorks, Flight Safety Consultants and Safe Flight, developed the technology and licensed it to SAGEM Avionics, Inc. for commercial use. The technology is also being adapted to identify typical patterns and atypical events in other areas. Gary Prothero and ProWorks continues to provide the IT services behind the development of technologies related to The Morning Report.

Fuel the People Engine with Analysis

2007-04-26T15:54:00.000-07:00

CRM Magazine recently published a great article written by Jim Dickie titled Fueling the CRM Engine. The sub-title, Sales reps are spinning their wheels waiting for sales knowledge and relevant management tools to be integrated, summarizes the artcles message.

The key reason, he explains is that many companies have installed CRM applications expecting to see improvements simply based on the technology's presence. Somehow Dickie reached back fifteen years for a great quote by Jessica Keyes: "Technology does not beget a competitive advantage, any more than paint and canvas beget a Van Gogh." Fifteen years ago the Pentium was just coming out, but this statement still really applies in today's market.

The fact that "sales people still cannot easily get access to the knowledge they need to effectively compete," is reinforced by citing a 2007 analysis performed by CSO Insights. Firms were asked what information their salespeople needed to sell effectively, and to assess how easy it was for the salespeople to access that information.

Several very basic types of sales information appear on the resulting list. Namely, simple contact information, purchasing history, case studies, executive profiles, previous sales and marketing efforts and the customer's industry. It makes sense to the canny salesperson who is used to having to "Google" the customer, look up past purchase orders or even sift through pages of web content to track down the name of a decision maker before picking up the phone. This is really some very basic but critical information. So basic that it's painful to think that salespeople have to spend any significant time and effort to get at it. Precious time and effort that could otherwise be spent selling.

The process of collecting the required sales information must become as automated as possible in order to minimize the amount of detective work done by salespeople. A great deal of this information is readily available on the web databases. Salespeople know this because they "Google" for the information. The trouble is that locating good information can be like finding a needle in the giant haystack of web content. A task that text mining is perfectly suited for. A text mining tool can meticulously comb web content and analyze the results to eliminate unneeded information and report significant customer information such as contact information, executive information, industry, customer lists, partners and recent events. Ideally all of this would be connected to a CRM system with customer reports available to salespeople at the push of a button.

With all due respect to the author Mr. Dickie, I would have titled the article "Fueling the People Engine". Simply fueling CRM still does not beget a Van Gogh. The the real engine in the sales process are the salespeople and businesses are clearly saying they need more access to higher quality food.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM Analytics Foundation

2007-04-03T11:38:00.000-07:00

Microsoft recently released the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Analytics Foundation, a shared-source download for Microsoft CRM customers and partners. The Analytics Foundation is available as a free of charge shared-source download at CodePlex. The current release is in beta and includes sample code, pre-built templates and components, and guidelines for building business intelligence solutions for Microsoft CRM.

I got a chance to see a demo last month in San Diego at the Convergence event for Microsoft Dynamics and speak with the Wan Li Zhu, who is the coordinator of the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Analytics Foundation project. It looked good. Wan showed us some very nice OLAP integration with Excel 2007, a service dashboard, lead qualification and sales analysis. The views were very easy to understand and it was all right inside of CRM.

Based on this release and a few of the presentation sessions at Convergence it looks like Microsoft Dynamics is definitely trying to enhance the value of their CRM solution with analytics. Wan Li Zhu spoke with us at the exposition and described the Analytics Foundation as something Microsoft would like to see partners run with. More recently on the CodePlex message board Wan stated that Microsoft is intending to make the Analytics Foundation a product but did not have a schedule to share.

The Analytics Foundation data sheet presents the software as "a suite of business intelligence products that work with Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0." The CodePlex description of the Analytics Foundation as a "business intelligence solution accelerator" to help partners deliver analytics to customers is more accurate. Wan stated to us that support for the Analytics Foundation was still available only by blog and forum. Based on the communication thus far it does not look like Microsoft is ready to fully support the Analytics Foundation.

That does not mean that the Analytics Foundation is without value to end-users. As a Microsoft Partner and developers of analysis software, we see some great things in the Analytics Foundation to take advantage of to benefit CRM customers. Data analysis by nature is not a cookie cutter solution. Quality results require the analysis to be fitted to specific problems and business processes. When trying to extract useful information out of complex business data, CRM customers that do not have the benefit of in-house analysis experts will want the assistance of partner with experience in analysis and CRM. A good analysis partner will tailor what Microsoft has provided through the Analysis Foundation to address the unique needs and problems of individual organizations.

ProWorks is interested in working with CRM partners and customers who would like to get a head start with CRM analytics. We can help you take advantage of the Analytics Foundation or even create customized analyses designed specifically to meet a special need. ProWorks is particularly interested in the areas of predictive analysis, data mining and analyising unstructured data such as the text found in blogs. Even if you just want to chat about the future direction of CRM analytics, shoot us an email at crm@proworks.com.

Some of the customer benefits of the Analytics Foundation listed by Microsoft include:

Executives can better track and manage business performance
through dashboards
Managers and employees can create reports quickly and
make better decisions
Sales, marketing, service employees can identify new opportunities
to grow revenue and increase efficiency through
predictive analytics.

Analytics Foundation Requirements:

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0
Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition with Service Pack 1
SQL Server 2005 (Standard or above)
Internet Information Services (IIS)
Both .NET Framework 1.1 and 2.0
Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003 or Windows SharePoint Services with SP2
Business Scorecard Manager 2005 (required for editing and creating new scorecards)
Visual Studio 2005
Excel 2007 (recommended)

ProWorks Exhibits at Convergence

2007-03-19T16:51:00.000-07:00

Last week Jason and I attended Microsoft's annual Convergence conference and exposition showcasing the Microsoft Dynamics line of business solutions. This was my second year to the event and I was pleased that San Diego was the location. The weather was great and the city fondly reminded me of Honolulu. Reportedly over 8000 people were in attendance, evidence that the Microsoft Dynamics community is continuing to grow. Again this year I was impressed that the event planners were able to manage that many people and make there time productive. The exposition hours seemed to be extended this year. At times there is quite a bit of traffic which was great for us. Jason and I got a chance to speak with a number of CRM partners and customers. I noticed a distinct increase in the awareness around CRM analytics and predictive analysis. We have to thank Microsoft for at least some of that. They ran a CRM analysis demo in the expo hall and had a couple of educational sessions devoted specifically to CRM analytics. As partners and customers begin to complete their inital implementations of CRM they seem to be looking for ways to take advantage of their growing CRM data.

One of our biggest challenges has been to clearly present the potential benefits of CRM analytics. Good analysis has been limited to data experts and executives for so long I think everyone else naturally asks "so how does this help me?" I am really looking for forward to Microsoft contributing to the general credibility of CRM analytics and predictive analysis and helping ProWorks to focus on meeting specific analysis needs for CRM users.

I would not have complained if the exposition hours were reduced a bit. Some of times overlap with the learning sessions and the number of visitors can be pretty minimal.

The structured networking could also have been much better. I completely agree with Mike Snyder's assessment of the networking system on the Sonoma Partners Blog. Last years system was not the greatest solution. This years new solution was terrible by comparison. I hope the event coordinators notice a reduction in scheduled meetings through the networking system and give it some serious attention for next year.

It was great trip. Thank you to Microsoft for hosting a fun and productive event. The entertainment was great. Where do you find an old Asteroids arcade game? I particularly enjoyed the sushi table and the baked brie. And thank you to all the Dynamics partners and customers that visited our booth and spoke with us.

Convergence 2007

2007-03-19T13:59:00.000-07:00

Thanks to everyone who stopped by our booth at Microsoft Convergence 2007!

We enjoyed our time in San Diego and made some great contacts. Shortly we will be announcing the winners of the books we were giving away.

If you want to see a demo or would like to learn more about our predictive analysis and text mining for CRM, just contact us at crm@proworks.com.

ProWorks Celebrates its 20th Anniverary

2006-11-29T10:14:00.000-08:00

ProWorks Corporation proudly celebrates our 20th Anniversary this year. Thank you to all of our past and present customers and partners. For two decades it has been our pleasure to contribute to your information technology needs. We look forward to continuing to provide you with the highest quality software and IT services for years to come.

Looking Back:
In 1986 Susan Prothero founded ProWorks based on the sales of Flipper Graphics Library written by Gary Prothero for Clipper. Driven by an entrepreneurial spirit and a passion for innovation Susan and Gary together formed ProWorks LLC in 1988. Staying abreast of the latest technology at the time ProWorks LLC created data visualization tools for Visual Studio.
These tools attracted the attention of a NASA airlines safety project managed by Battelle. Soon after, Gary Prothero was named the technical lead on the project in 1999. Steady growth allowed ProWorks to move to our present offices in Corvallis, Oregon in 2002.

ProWorks continued to partner with Battelle to develop cutting edge software applications based on data analysis. In 2005 ProWorks consulting team was recognized with a R&D 100 Award for 'The Morning Report' software. Today, ProWorks continues to deliver quality IT services to Battelle and NASA and maintains a line of available COM and .NET data visualization tools.

Looking Forward:
Building on our successes delivering actionable data mining insights to airlines and hospital safety experts, ProWorks is developing CRM analysis tools that improve the daily operations of sales, marketing and customer service users. New CRM solutions such as Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0 are making customer relationship management systems affordable for small and mid-sized businesses and usable by non-expert employees. ProWorks CRM analysis software is designed make the same analysis benefits previously accessible only to large enterprises, available to a broader spectrum of business users.

Although ProWorks has grown in size over the past two decades, we have remained committed to the tradition of service and innovation that we started with and has steadily steered us through recessions, changes in government spending and the dot-com bubble burst. And of course we are thankful to all of our customers and partners that have supported us all these years. Happy Birthday to ProWorks and a Happy Holliday to you

Sharing the Benefits of Data Mining at the Olsen Thielen Technologies Summit

2006-11-28T11:22:00.000-08:00

Earlier this month ProWorks was invited to attended and contribute to the 4th Annual Olsen Thielen Technologies Summit and Year End 2006 in St. Paul, Minnesota. About a hundred local area businesses attended the two-day Summit to learn how Olsen Thielen Technologies and the Microsoft Dynamics line of business solutions can help drive their success.

Olsen Thielen Technologies (OTT) is a progressive information technology consulting company that provides a wide array of products and services for small to mid-market businesses in the Upper Midwest. Their services include implementing solutions that extend from front office CRM to back office operational applications. OTT is a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner with competencies in Microsoft Business Solutions and Networking Infrastructure technologies.

Jason Prothero and I were pleased to present at two of the Microsoft CRM educational sessions alongside Gretchen Mann, CRM Practice Manager and Tad Thompson, Senior CRM Consultant with the OTT Microsoft Dynamics CRM team. We concentrated on educating the audience about SQL Server Analysis Services 2005, it's data mining capabilities and how data mining is able to positively impact regular business processes and daily tasks.

View ProWorks OTT Summit PowerPoint Slide Deck

A common theme throughout the CRM sessions was the importance of utilizing CRM to empower employees and drive businesses forward. ProWorks could not support this message more. As Gretchen Mann pointed out during her presentation, simply storing information within CRM can be compared to throwing the information into a waste basket. Businesses are impacted when that information is transformed into actionable insight through data mining.

Thank you to the great folks at Olsen Thielen Technologies for allowing us help spread the message of CRM and data mining.

Cashing in on a Truly Educated Guess

2006-08-29T09:47:00.000-07:00

Olsen Thielen Technologies, a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, recently published an article for their newsletter "Bits & Bytes" titled: CRM:Cashing in on a Truly Educated Guess. In the article, OTT discusses the prediction of customer behavior as a way to cash in on CRM .

"With technology’s increasing ability to track customer behavior, however, we’ve discovered that history is a more accurate predictor of the future than profiles. Therefore, CRM strategy involves making a truly educated guess at what the customers will buy based on what they have bought or what other customers like them have bought."

OTT points out some interesting areas where CRM and predictive analysis can make a difference including:

Targeting market segments by order history
Rescuing “at risk” customers showing a reduction in activity
Tracking product or service lines that customers have been offered and their interest level
Cross-selling and up-selling customers according to other similar customers
Adjusting sales and marketing strategyies according to behavioral predictions

Large scale businesses have been using predictive analysis to maximize the value of their CRM data for years and the benefits are no secret. ProWorks is excited that business solution providers targeting small to mid-market businesses like Olsen Thielen are recognizing the value of CRM analytics.

ProWorks is Recognized in NASA Tech Briefs

2006-08-15T15:36:00.000-07:00

Congratulations to Gary Prothero, Chris Moshbrucker, Adi Andrei, Tim Romanowski Daniel Robin and Jason Prothero on their recognition by NASA for their contributions on behalf of ProWorks Corporation in the August 2006 issue of NASA Tech Briefs. In an article titled "Statistical Detection of Atypical Aircraft Flights" a new method for identifying potentially unsafe flights is described. The new method was recently awarded a United States patent (U.S. Patent No. 6,937,924).

The method and the software to automate the method sift through huge amounts of data to discover statistically atypical flights. This new method exceeds conventional methods of detection by more effectively identifying more subtle data patterns that have not been previously prescribed.

Further information is available through the Technical Support Package at www.techbriefs.com/tsp under the Information Sciences category.

Flipper Graphing Web Service demo

2006-07-24T16:13:00.000-07:00

Our website has been redesigned lately and it may be hard to find the ProWorks Flipper Graphing Web Service demo application.

It is still up and you can learn more about it here:

Flipper Web Service

Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference 2006

2006-07-17T14:08:00.000-07:00

We just got back from the MS WWPC 2006 in Boston. I personally like Boston and thought the venue was pretty good.

We met with quite a few Microsoft Partners and Resellers and will be following up with them over the next couple of weeks.

It was a good conference and we got a sneak peek into a lot of the new technologies coming down the pipe. It will be interesting to see how CRM Live evolves over the next year or so. Vista and Office 2007 sure look good so far. I know my next machine will be a Vista machine.

Thanks to all those who met with us and we wish everyone luck over the next year!

Utilizing Analysis to Improve Guided Selling

2006-06-02T16:23:00.000-07:00

Guided selling tools assist sales professionals respond to customers needs effectively and follow best practice guidelines. They guide the user through the sales process. The most basic form of a guided sales tool is the sales script. Scripts alone do not adequately address the changing relationship between the customer and the sales professional. Competitive sales people need a richer set of information delivered in real-time to meet the changing needs of the customer and ensure a continued positive relationship. The alternative can result in customer dissatisfaction and opportunity losses.

Pointing to Profits, an article recently published in CRM magazine discusses the natural benefits of integrating CRM and guided selling tools. Tim Sullivan, vice president of product development at consultancy Sales Performance International talks about the value of analytics alongside guided selling tools.

"Now, with analytics, guided selling is more dynamic, and can be tailored more to situations." And like analytics, according to Schneider, guided selling tools have been gaining traction in both point solution form and as part of an end-to-end CRM suite.

CRM systems allow key metrics from each sales interaction to be recorded. Analysis of these metrics can identify successful sales patterns and behaviors. Guided selling tools deliver these insights to the sales force be applied in day to day. These insights can impact the performance of individual sales professionals by identifying key steps in the sales process and recommending specific actions such as pitching up-sale opportunities or offering added incentives to close the sale. Automated analysis is able to continually track changing sales patterns and customer behaviors, allowing integrated guided selling tools to meet the needs of non-static customers and products.

As Schneider states, modern guided selling tools rely on analytics to continually deliver the goods.

To maximize their value to the sales staff, guided selling tools should provide assistance on a real-time basis. Insights should be accessed easily and adjust promptly and appropriately according to changes in the customer. The CRM system and guided selling tools should work smoothly alongside the sales professional enhancing their own experience and skill set.

"The process must be conversational. There are rule-based wizard solutions, but they always feel like wizards--very artificial." The goal, Fordham says, is to support the salesperson, not try to replace her. "You don't want to lose the sense that there's an interaction going on."

When guided selling tools and CRM are well integrated with the way the sales professional operates, the process becomes a closed loop. New sales data entered into CRM continually affects the analysis results, feeding guided sales tools with dynamic insights for the sales staff.

With good metrics and analysis, every sales interaction works for you, even if you don't make the sale.

Empowering People with Information and Analysis

2006-04-28T14:35:00.000-07:00

You may have seen some of Microsoft's new People Ready ads promoting the message that software should empower a businesses most important asset, its people. A recent article published by Microsoft called Technology is the Tool, People are the Key, talks about the value of using technology to deliver useful information to people.

Often, software provides too much information to the user, complicating business processes and overwhelming them. This has been a particular problem for CRM implementations. Businesses have made significant investments on CRM systems that collect and present large amounts of data but fail to deliver the information that people want or in the way they want it.

"...managers complain that information overload can slow decision-making and actually impede a business's efforts. The solution, say analysts, is to use technology to untie the knot sometimes created by information, not tangle it further."

When challenged with a great deal of information, data analysis can be an effective tool to summarize, describe and compare information in a way that promotes decisions-making rather than impeding it. Analysis of CRM information can yield important insights that empower people to take action with confidence. Employees are able to interact with customers armed with the knowledge of customer trends and patterns of behavior. Good CRM analytics and information allows people to leverage their own skills and experience for the benefit of the business. Creating actionable insight is a key for businesses of all types to maximize the value of their CRM data.

"As author John Naisbitt said many years ago, we are drowning in information, but starved for knowledge. Today's technology must do more than simply vacuum up more information. It must deploy that information in the service of those who use it. That creates knowledge about how to better serve customers, develop innovative ideas, or speed time to market for great products. When information is put to work in the service of a business and its employees, rather than as an obstacle or a daunting task, great things happen."

Thanks to everyone who stopped by at CorBiz!

2006-04-28T12:07:00.000-07:00

Last night we participated in a local business showcase at the OSU Alumni Center with several other Corvallis/Albany businesses called CorBiz. It's put on by the Corvallis Chamber of Commerce and is a fun event. There are lots of catering businesses and that means plenty of great food to sample.

We were out there simply trying to increase awareness of Microsoft CRM and what Customer Relationship Management software can do for local businesses. Of course we're always talking about consulting or talking about our Sales Analysis plug-ins.

The best part of the night was that we won a $300 coupon from a local image/printing company in town called AlphaGraphics. If only we had that before Convergence! Regardless, we're excited and can't wait to get more/better trade show displays.

Again, thanks to everyone who stopped by at our booth last night. If you need more information about CRM or Sales/Marketing analysis and what it can do for you, give us a call at 541-752-9885 and mention that you heard about us at CorBiz.

The Envelope Please...

2006-04-03T14:56:00.000-07:00

The winner of the Creative Zen Vision:M Media Player giveaway at Microsoft Convergence 2006 is...

Tony Morelli
Manager of Application Development
Kissimmee Utility Authority

Scanned: Sunday, 3/26/2006 15:07

Congratulations Tony! You will be contacted shortly to pick out a color and shipped your new portable media player!