PST Newsletter

    1. What's New in 2011 at PST

    Welcome to 2011, the first month is almost in the books.  It signals a
    number of changes for us, which we'll describe briefly below and
    how they will effect you.  Thanks again for reading and have a great 2011.

    ManagePro Version 10 out at the end of February.
    Last year was marked by lots of change in our development team and a
    number of incremental builds and releases for version 9.5.  We'll be pulling all of those together plus three final features listed below for version 10 - so get ready to upgrade at the end of next month.  We'll give you a week's notice.  Here's the final 3 features we are adding:
    1. Email and text messaging automatic notification - you'll be able to have to-dos and appointments sent to your phone automatically.
    2. Recurring events and to-dos/tasks - this has been a long time coming, and will make scheduling those follow-ups much easier.
    3. Updated Gantt chart with the ability to set quarters to fiscal year, not just calendar year.

    iPad support for MProLite.
    We were expecting to have this completed in January.  We had outsourced it.  They didn't deliver, we let the vendor go and are going to plan B, but are still looking forward to this and expect it by the end of Feb.

    Monthly Update Service.
    We've launched a solution for all of you who struggle or who have team members who struggle to keep ManagePro updated.  Read more about it in the next section.

    Subscription Tech Support:
    One of the strengths we have locked into year after year is coming up with innovative features, lots of them... and really strong tech support.  We want you, our customer, to be able to pick up the phone and call us, and get moving towards a resolution quickly.  Historically we've carried most of the cost, but as of 2011 we are switching to more of an industry standard. 

    Beginning February 1st, you'll have 3 options for tech support:
    1. Free email tech support for simple issues and direction to our online knowledge base.
    2. Pay per incident at $30/15 minute increments, whether you submit the incident by email or telephone or web meeting.
    3. Annual subscription, where we discount our charge 50% when you prepay for 5 hours of tech support, e.g. instead of $600 its $300 for 5 hours!

    2. Monthly Update Service

This one is really important.  We find that there is one problem that plagues easily 80% of our customers.  The number is probably above 90%.  If you're wondering what that is, it's the problem of not keeping ManagePro updated.  Whether that's simply entering progress updates and completing to-dos, or it's tracking allocated hours, scorecard results and financial metrics.

 Over the years I've written and spoken about this topic numerous times; how to go about encouraging and supporting adoption, knowing when to reinforce and when to insist, and the value of leadership and the use of ManagePro in meetings as a crucial structure.  My blog has a lot of tips in this area.

But starting this year, we want to offer you a much more direct solution than we ever have before.  It's called our monthly update service.  Basically we provide a weekly follow-up service for as many users in your organization as you select.  We complete a weekly 30 minute call combined with web based screen sharing.  It's immediate, it prompts consistency and it takes "I forgot" or "I didn't have time" out of the equation.

We've made the pricing very, very reasonable.  We wanted to price this at a level where you can't afford not to use it, if you are having any difficulty with your team members (or yourself) not regularly using ManagePro.    If this was working out, instead of ManagePro, think of it as a service in which we bring a trainer virtually to your office every week for 30 minutes to help you stay in shape.

You subscribe to a minimum of 2 hours/month for each person enrolled and the rates are either $35/hour or $60/hour based upon whether you need basic or intermediate/advanced service.  You'll find more information about the service on our website at: http://www.managepro.com/services.consulting.html


3. Three Power Tips

Let's cover three power tips I use to make sure you've got them in your bag of techniques as well. 

1. Create Item - this is my most frequent "repurposing" tool in ManagePro.  I use it to repurpose an event and the comments to a progress update, or text within a progress update or record details to a to-do, so I don't forget it.  I also use it to carve sub-goals out of information I paste into a record's Requirements' field.  It saves me time, and better yet saves me from forgetting to follow-up or keep others in the loop.    You can invoke this tool as a right click option in most areas of the program.

Create Item - repurposing tool

2. View Configuration - I use this right click administrator function in every database I work with to set up custom views such that they reflect a dashboard of what's important, so the user can manage in a glance.  If you haven't used this option to set up ManagePro to give you a view that displays what's important, what's up and what needs attention, you're missing out.  By the way I usually include a combination of scorecards and calculated fields so that these views fit like a glove.  I also use our new view customization tools to only show those views to each user that are helpful to them, and reduce the information overwhelm.  Do yourself a favor and get ManagePro set up to support you well in 2011.

3.   Drag and Drop Email - I use this tool every day.  You should be too.  It's a big time saver, but let me share with you something you might not know about this cool feature.  If you're like me, I may not remember exactly which record to attach an email to as a to-do or event.  It inevitably happens just as I need to get into the next meeting, and am faced with hitting the Find button in the ribbon control to first locate the record before I drag it in from ManagePro.  If you're just going to convert an email to a to-do type of task or an event, do yourself a favor and just drop it in your calendar.  You can assign the related goal later.  In MProLite, I do essentially the same thing by creating a line item called "Ad-hoc tasks and projects" and then drag emails to that line item when I'm in a hurry.  Again I can always come back later and tie them into a specific account or project record.

 

I'll have all the details of what's new in Version 10 in the February newsletter.  Be thinking about setting aside time at the end of February to upgrade and get some training if you need to brush up your skills.

 

     
    Rodney Brim,  Ph.D.
    CEO Performance Solutions Technology
    Blog - http://www.PerformanceSolutionsTech.com/Blog
    Twitter Account - http://www.twitter.com/RodneyBrim

    PS. Make 2011 the year you get your strategy and metrics in play in ManagePro!

    If your database isn't tracking your strategy and the metrics to indicate if you're on track, don't put it off another month, another year.  Get it Done!  We'll help.  We've got a great consulting service to help you with this. 

    Go to http://www.managepro.com/services.consulting.html for more information, then give us a call if you need help and let's get this on your schedule and taken care of.

     

January 2011 Newsletter content:

  1. What's New at PST in 2011
  2. Monthly Update Service
  3. 3 Power Tips