With any great company or Marvel movie, there is always “The Origin Story.” Here is ours.
During and right after the Covid lockdown in the US people started doing different things. Some took up new hobbies, some made babies, and some changed careers or started new companies. I chose the latter.
While working “in” my technology business I have always struggled with generating proposals. I have used various products over the years. I discovered they never did everything I wanted them to do. My pain included the look of the proposals, sales tax, and the overall functionality of the software. Each product did some of what I wanted but none did all of them. In addition, some products had legitimate bugs that jeopardized sales. Imagine showing a customer a preview of a $14,000 proposal and the preview showing $1,400. Imagine a software release that removed all the formatting from a proposal so that it looked like a Notepad document. It prevented us from sending proposals until it was fixed. Yup, been there, done that.
I have found, repeatedly, while the respective companies were receptive to my concerns or issues, they failed to ever really do much about it. In one case, I was promised about 12 items corrected in 6 weeks. I believe 3 of them were done in 18 months. As Kevin O’Leary from Shark Tank likes to say, “Stop the insanity!” I consulted a few peers and all of them had similar experiences to mine.
Couple the above with my background in databases, software development, CRMs, and PSAs (Professional Services Automation), and this creates the perfect recipe for me going from the sidelines into “the show”.
We didn’t stop at proposals. CONTACT relationship management (CRM) and marketing are also integral parts of the front-office…and Bizzity. What good is all of this without metrics? How else can you view your progress and goals? What about automated workflow? Don’t you want to control communications from your company? We do too! We’ve built all of this into Bizzity. Along the way, we came up with some innovative processes and technology. We are even patenting some of it!
Notice I keep mentioning “We”. No, I am not French and there is not a mouse in my pocket. I couldn’t do this alone. Over the past 2 years, I have assembled a fantastic team (Marvel fans can equate this to the Avengers!) “Teamwork makes the dream work!” is one phrase I use daily. When we started development, there were two values we started with:
- We produce software that works.
- We produce software that works fast.
Over the past two years, this has evolved to what we have today
- Always help the customer.
- We produce software that works.
- We produce software that works fast.
- Do what, when, and how you say you are going to do something.
- Transparency always.
- Sharing is caring. (We screen share A LOT!)
These values make their way into everything we do. So, that’s Bizzity’s origin story. Instead of making babies during Covid, we made Bizzity. Our team is doing amazing things and we are just getting started!