Project Status

Your Free Purchase Order Software is Here

Did you hear the “pop”?  That was us celebrating the arrival of the world’s first free e-procurement system.

You can download your copy here.

We’ve tried to predict your questions and we put that knowledge into the online help system and the first round of tutorial videos.  But we aren’t expecting to hit a home run right out of the gate, so please send us your feedback and let us know what else we can do to help.

And don’t forget to sign up for this Blog.  As we add to the software and our library of tutorials or other resources, we’ll be making blog posts to let you know that there’s something new to help.  If you don’t follow the blog, you won’t find out about the new stuff.

Thanks again for trying the free version of SpendMap!

Support System Now Online

The new support system is now online, so you can get free support for your free software.

I know, I know, you need the software before you need support.  We’re almost there.  Just working through a couple issues with the installer program, to make it as easy as possible for everyone to get the system up and running.

So in the meantime, while our developers are putting the bow on the package, the rest of us have had an opportunity to tie up some loose ends, like the new support system, finishing up a couple sections of the Online Help, and so on.

So the whole package will be a bit more polished, which I think you’ll all appreciate.

Hang in there everyone…we’re very close.

Starting to get the word out on free Purchase Order software

Reaching out to a handful of people who showed interest in our web-based product but who didn’t have an appetite for our enterprise pricing.  Hoping some will sign up for the blog, as a sort of preregistration list for when the software is ready to download in the next week or two.

Sure feels nice to be the bearer of good news!

 

In the Home Stretch

Getting ready to make the “friends and family” announcement to get an early set of eyes on the website before the official launch.

After that we’ll open up the site and start taking preregistrations as we complete our final software testing.  Very exciting.

Had a bit of disappointing news though.  Due to licensing issues with the third party software that we use in our Faxing and Barcode Modules, we won’t be able to include those in the first release of the free version. 

Good thing we engineered that auto-update feature for patches…once the issue is resolved, we will push out an update to enable the modules automatically behind the scenes.

I guess one can’t expect perfection in a big, innovative project like this.

Lifted the Veil Today

Had a team meeting today to unveil the project.  Lots of great questions and pretty much unanimously positive feedback.

Should make faster progress now that the rest of the team is involved.

Suzanne in Client Services thinks that her daycare could use some free Purchasing Software…the admin person spends a half day a week managing Purchase Orders.  You got it Sue, now anyone can slash paperwork and save time.

E-procurement for everyone…let the saving begin!

Free Software Rocks

Just finished setting up the blog/website for the project (this blog/website I mean). 

I say “blog/website” because the lines are pretty blurry.  It’s amazing how much you can do with this free WordPress software.

Hopefully our Free-Procurement customers will be equally as impressed with what they can accomplish with the free Purchasing Software.

New YouTube Channel for Tutorials

Last couple weeks we’ve been working on a new YouTube channel  with online software tutorials.  Should be really helpful for new users.  A great compliment to the new Help System (which so far is getting rave reviews).

Six tutorials posted so far…mostly high-level stuff for now…
http://www.youtube.com/user/spendmap

YouTube is fun…feeling like a movie star!

😀

Summer 2011 Release

Wow, I can’t believe it’s been 9 months.

Lots of work but the improvements in this summer’s release, especially the many “ease-of-use” features, along with the new Help System, will definitely help new users get up and running with the system fast.  A definite prerequisite for this Free endeavour.

Next step is infrastructure to support mass-distribution of Free version (downloads, automatic updates, etc.).

Very exciting!

The ball is rolling

A few weeks in and it’s starting to come together.

We’ve got the to-do lists together for what needs to change in the software, what will be needed for the support infrastructure and we’ve roughed in the marketing.  Content for new on-line help system also coming along nicely.

Biggest effort will be the software changes…it’s got to be much easier than in the old days when we could count on end-user training.

Next meeting is to axe what we can live without and pick a launch date.

Very exciting!