Hi, i am facing some generic problems and i think many of us out here should be facing the same …. so i thought i might put up a post regarding the same and attract some wise answers.
My customers are enterprises, so my viewpoint and questions revolve around them. Feel free to give generic answers …
1. Website management – Whats’ the easiest way to manage and scale a website with more of less static pages. I found wordpress to be an overkill and wiki an over simplification. In wordpress you have to remove/turn-off all the extra features which are blog centric and wiki’s flat URL hierarchy kills a lot of fun.
2. Online suppor system and Knowledge base (KB)– I found no good (esp. Open Source/Free in code or cost) solutions for managing customer centric issues or knowledge articles. Any suggestions. I can foresee in very near future that, KB and support and licenses if not centralized can become a mess. I just found JIRA and Confluence good, but seems like even they are not very much customer centric and costly. BTW, I use trac for internal development and project management.
Also how do you handle customer calls. Its easy now giving customers just one mobile number, but don’t see it scaling.
3. Open Source: Any indian companies here, with good experience of utilizing the Open Source development model, not just PR ?
As i understand, to utilize the benefits of open source, you should have a community which also gives back in source or opinion. Rest is just PR.
4. Enterpreneur Meetings : Do you guys meet up some place where VCs are not there ?
I am not particularly happy the way these conferences by nasscon/Tie are organized. They charge a big sum + travel and usually there are just 1/2 speakers ready to share and interact. VCs and Speakers are praising what they have done “right” in past and attendees are just busy pleasing them. Now it may be just me feeling this way …
IMO, Good food involves much more than knowledge of “good recipes”. I guess you should know the possible mistakes/gochas as well. I have done atleast 1001 mistakes, and would like to share them and learn from others.
So, if all those who have done in the past and all those attempting the same can get together dumping there company tags behind, outside a five star hotel … I think it would be great !!
Opinions ??
- India’s Hottest Startups - September 7, 2008
- The case of SonimTech – And lessons we can learn - August 23, 2008
- The Druvaa Story – III - July 14, 2008
Yeah Open Coffee club Mumbai, if you guys like to chat up and contribute to collaborative ecosystem for entrepreneurs. Time, 2nd december, 11am (Venue: Barista, Bandra-Bandstand).
Hi Satpal,
I am in for NCR.
Let me try and get some more feedback on this and would contact you for the same.
jaspreet
Thank god I am not the only one who feel that Tie lunch is a litttle expensive.No doubt Tie events are gud and can be of great help for budding entreprenuers.But why so high registration fee? How they define their target audience?
As a aspringing entrepenuer I am not in favour of such highly glamorous,hyped,well marketed but one in a year event.I seek a bit of moreinformal meetings once in month where we can discuss issues such as mentioned by Jaspreet with other entreprenuers, find potential co-founders and team memebers, share our experiences with others.Do we always need a VC to be there? I guess no.
I really like the OpenCoffee Club concept(http://www.opencoffeeclub.org/) and would like to have such meet in NCR.OCC is already getting good response in Bangalore where they had two meeting of bangalore entrepreuners.I am wondering if there are enough takers of such concept in NCR.
Thanx for your help,
website: drupal is good. I am struggling to get a good template now.
CRM: sugar is very impressive but not customer facing. same for vtiger.
would try the ones mentioned by Vijay
OpenSource: I think we as a company would take this plunge.
We have decided to use pure open source, give of free (in cost) to open projects and free up the code, when we are ready.
I guess its crucial if you want to deliver value to your customers.
Meetings: Would like to catch up, next time i am traveling.
Jaspreet
1. Website: Have you tried Drupal? It is a much nicer alternative, compared to a wiki or a blog. Its actually a CMS (Content management system), so its built for being the underlying system behind a site.
Should take about a week with someone who can figure things out.
2. Online Support: There is a product from Tenlines called Helpdesk pilot (www.tenmiles.com), and also another product named SupportMagic (http://www.supportmagic.com/) which can help in the CRM space.
As for Project management, apart from the usual Basecamp/Active collab, and using a mix of MS Proj + Subversion or so, you could also try Catalyst by a company named Silverstripe (http://www.silverstripesoftware.com/)
3. Open Source: I cant think of any companies that have quite done it yet – that is build a community around a product and let it evolve; atleast not yet in India. We live in a world of mashups, I guess. Very few people even tlk about the traditional development/commit model anymore. Our open source community is also the least contributing community ever. The openoffice and ubuntu group itself is struggling to find people in india who will pitch in. startups wont make it up that steep mountain. Not yet.
4. I couldnt agree with you more. An entrepreneur first of all, needs to quit going to all these AA-like meetings. If you want to socialize within a circle, then head to the nearest Barcamp, MoMo, or Open Coffee Club meet. All of these are happening in most of the bigger cities.