Sink or SWM!

If I roll the clock back to April 2007, there I was sat outside a Starbucks in Bristol waiting to see if anyone will actually turn up to the Opencoffee event that I had organised.  Thankfully 3 people did turn up.  John Bradford and Mark & Tom from Simpleweb.  So we all talked and eventually got onto the subject of websites, which to me was timely as I was in desperate need of new website and my skills did not lend themselves to building one.  Luckily this was something that Mark & Tom clearly revelled in.  At the time Simpleweb was all about building low cost effective websites which above all could be manged by the client.  This was just what I wanted and if we jump forward a couple of weeks the deal was done and soon after I had a brand new website.  So what you may cry?  The key to the Simpleweb offering was the backend system that allowed me to manage the content and make the updates that I needed.  Again nothing new there, however this backend solution was in the process of evolving into the feature rich management platform that it is today.

Skipping forward to Nov 2008, I went to Mark and Tom with a couple of problems that ideally I hoped they  could solve.

1. I needed a helpdesk tool that my clients could use
2. I needed a tool to allow me to distribute documents to my clients
3. I needed a tool to aggregate RSS feeds to my clients
4. All of the above needed to be wrapped up in a single interface, that was both simple and functional.

Two hours later and a full whiteboard (Mark does like his whiteboards), we had a plan of action.  All of the above would be built and integrated into SWM (Simple Web Management).  This was exactly what I wanted and better still it could be delivered in rapid time.  So about 8 weeks later I took delivery of my helpdesk, Download manager and RSS aggregator.

The helpdesk application is a marvel of simplicity, so many helpdesk applications complicate the process of raising the issue that many users resort to calling the helpdesk, exactly what I did not want to happen.  The app captures all the relevant information and tracks all the history and above all keeps my clients informed of exactly what is going on with the issue.  Since the release my clients have readily taken to the application and have been keen to  highlight how simple and easy it is to use.

The RSS Aggregator is a simple way of me grabbing relevant rss feeds and presenting them to my clients in a hassle free and in a place that is familiar to them.  Its simple and effective and my clients love it!!

Pushing information around to clients can be a nightmare, thanks to download manager I can push bulletins, reports or general documents to all my clients or individual clients at a push of a button saving me time and my clients time.

The beauty of the SWM platform is its flexibility, there is a full range of applications that you can plug into the system and many more in the pipeline.  To say that the platform has streamlined my business processes is an understatement, it has allowed my business to SWM not sink (Yeah that is bad but it had to be done).

So if you are looking for creative ways to manage your clients better,  then I suggest you talk to the guys at SimpleWeb

Now for the boring stuff – I was not paid to produce this post, I am not affiliated with Simpleweb in any way other than a paying customer and I produced this post of my own free will.

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