InfoStrat's Townsend Report

A wiki -- software that gives you an editable information source similar to Wikipedia -- is a great resource for capturing unstructured information used in pursuing sales opportunities.  Microsoft SharePoint includes wikis, and the latest version is easier to use than ever. We use our SharePoint wiki to gather up the fruits of web searches, such as the profile and history of the client, information on likely competitors, news stories, and other documentation.  We use Dynamics CRM to store the structured information on a sales opportunity, but a wiki really is a better place to store unstructured data.  It is so easy to use that people can jump in and contribute with little or no training. 

Quality software depends on the quality of requirements.  It's not easy to separate real software requirements from other stuff passing as requirements (what I will call SPAR).  If you were to transcribe a requirements interview and analyze all the documents which are used to inform requirements, you would find the majority of words spoken or written do not translate into actionable requirements. Here are some common examples of SPAR which you can easily find in software solicitations: Meaningless bromides User friendly Intuitive Seamless integration Leading edge of technology Dangerous ambiguities Including, but not limited to... Integration with multiple [unspecified] systems Compatible with mobile devices to be identified later Impossible constraints Easily accommodate changes without programming Compatible with [unspecified] future products and technologies Meet all privacy laws enacted by federal, state or local governments All updates are accomplished

My company InfoStrat is a software boutique.  We're a small company that specializes in several related areas, especially on developing line of business solutions on the Microsoft platform.  I'm often asked why organizations should hire our company rather than a large systems integrator or a staffing company. A boutique usually consists of permanent, fulltime employees who are organized in teams to tackle a project.  This is different from a staffing company that focuses on gathering resumes of qualified individuals and adding them to a team in another organization.  The team has worked together and knows each person's strengths and weaknesses. Specialization allows boutiques to stay up to date with the latest technological advances in their area, and they often have more experience in their specialties than generalists. The advantage of a large systems integrator is that their staff covers a much wider set of skills and technologies than any boutique. Boutiques often

Dynamics CRM for Government Contractors is designed to help government contractors track their sales and marketing activities, leading to great productivity for business development.  Here are some of the goals that our clients are achieving with this solution: Making the sales pipeline visible to managers Creating reminders for sales activities Defining which opportunities to discuss at sales meetings Helping people learn from account activity Providing background information for bid/no bid meetings Managing proposal writing processes Managing proposal review processes Streamlining reporting Offering one centralized source for accurate information Running marketing campaigns Our clients have chosen Microsoft Dynamics CRM because: Integration with Outlook, SharePoint and Microsoft Office May be deployed on premise, hosted or in the cloud Less expensive the competitive CRM software Wide support Over 27,000 customers from small to enterprise      Over 1,700,000 us

This week Microsoft announced its Customer Excellence Award winners at its Convergence conference in Atlanta.  One of the awards went to the Ohio Department of Developmental Disabilities for its initiative to improve care for disabled individuals served by the DODD. Using Scribe allowed Microsoft partner McGladrey LLC to connect to seven different environments much more quickly than could be achieved with custom coding.  Scribe is the integration and migration tool for Dynamics CRM which is preferred by most Dynamics CRM partners, including InfoStrat.  About half the customer excellence awards this year went to customers using Scribe.

Responding to a government RFP is often a guessing game, and the biggest guess that contractors have to make is the budget for a project. The unwillingness or inability to share a budget for a product or a service hurts both the bidder and the government purchaser.  It leads to worthless proposals which far exceed a budget and wastes the time of bidders whose products are services are outside the budget. I'm not a contract specialist, so I don't know why the budget is often treated as a secret when in fact the budget was determined before a solicitation was published and is often available in public documents. In this case, why not provide a link to the budget document which has been published? The idea that stating the budget will inflate prices because otherwise contractors would have been less without knowing the budget is a myth.  If anything, discussing a budget leads to more realistic and successful purchasing.