Can you describe it in 20 words?

In recent times on two different occasions as part of promoting my app and at another time participating in an online contest, it required me to describe my product or company in few (20 or less) words or in one sentence.   In both cases it turned out to be a very useful exercise.  It forced me to bring clarity to my thoughts on what exactly I would like to tell others about the company or product.  With that restriction you cannot write a story or describe all the features of the product yet you have to make it convincing enough that the reader would want to know more.

In fact I believe that was the point of that contest as well to encourage you to have a clear vision.

If  you can’t describe it in less than 20 words what is it you are building then may be it’s time to re-visit the problem you intend to solve and redefine it

How would you describe your product?

Kranti – a productivity app

It dint start with let’s build an app for Mobile ( though always wanted to build one) but was driven out of a problem encountered few days ago.   Chatting with a couple of friends from two different professions – one a lawyer and another an IT executive,  the one from IT background was working on multiple projects at home and work.   He said not only do I need reminders for certain things I need to track but also need to ensure folks I am working with are keeping their end of the promise.   Wouldn’t it be nice if I can track these little projects I have to keep short notes on it, that  I can put reminders on and also somehow bring along folks I need to interact with on these projects.   As the conversation built on lawyer friend jumped in and said that is something I could use when I have my clients call in anytime during the day to get updates or dates on their cases.   In addition it may also help if I can keep a quick track of certain court and application fees that needs to be paid or documents I need from client next time they come to the meeting.

Given the interest of  “always wanted to build one” and a possible opportunity here to come up with something that might be useful, went ahead and started design for it.  We partnered with a great free lancer UI designer as well as Mobile app development company.  And thus came to life a simple productivity app that aims to help with use cases like above for people from various professions, be it an individual lawyer tracking cases and court fees, individual contractor working on various house projects or a real estate agent keeping track of house showings, working on closing a sell on a house and many more.

In terms of specifics,  app starts with a simple list of  your clients or primary contacts.  Each contact can have a list of projects and each project can be broken down into multiple milestones.  Every milestone has a due date and an option to specify a fee or amt due from the client on completion of that milestone.  You drill down from Clients-> Projects -> Milestones.

You can initiate a phone call from the client detail as well as send an SMS (text message) directly from the app with a note tied to it.   You can also schedule SMS to be sent on a particular date and time in future to the client.  These messages can be sent and scheduled at the general client level or very granular at each milestone level.  Also reminders for your self can be set at each milestone level.

Any phone call or SMS sent from the app, its history is maintained for a quick reference.  Similarly an account of all the payments by the clients is maintained as part of accounts history.

Since this is meant to be for your short projects or tasks you would like to keep track of while they are in progress and may no longer have a need for it you can remove or archive milestones/projects and clients.

Since all the pieces of the app are independent you can use the app just for scheduling SMS and keeping short note related to your clients/customers without ever creating a project or milestone.

Some screen shots from the app :

Home screen showing list of clients/customers/contacts associated with your projects

Client page to keep notes, reference and initiate a call

Send an SMS or schedule to send at a later date

Drill down to detail of a milestone to set reminders, any fees associated

View history of SMS and calls initiated from the app for a client

App is currently available for Android.  We are working on getting an iPhone version out soon.

Both the free lite version (Kranti  lite) and the paid professional version are now available on Google Play /Android Market.

Would be interested in your comments here and on Google Play if you give the app a spin.

How to scale and make a low volume product profitable?

When your customer or client is an individual user, you have the challenge of scaling the operation to socialize the product.   In case of a new start up with no separate marketing budget it becomes a daunting task.    To build a core group of subscribers or buyers of your product or service such that they can then help spread the word you would still want to reach out and make your product known in the first place to this core group.

Add to that traditionally low volumes for this product either since it is aimed for high net worth or power users or is meant for individuals in say a certain profession or job type.  A well known approach to address that is providing outlets to your product or service through dealerships.   How do you then make these dealerships interested in taking up your product given the risk around low volumes.

I recently had the privilege of attending a seminar organized by chapter of a professional computer organization.  A very interesting talk was from an executive for a luxury car company.  He articulated the issue they faced around low volumes and making the dealerships profitable.  A central premise of the approach was to empower the dealer to be more aware of the customers needs, preferences and keeping them well-informed with the latest developments around upcoming products.

I was thinking to myself this is so true that it even applies to any other industry or product or service that traditionally deals with low volumes.  For one of the services for my company where we provide some up to date information and offered as a subscription had a model of leveraging local dealers across cities to market the service.

What could we do to empower our dealers so that they can more effectively market and retain their clients year after year.? Our target client was associated to a specific profession.   A few ways that came to mind for the company was to help dealers with statistics on the number of professionals in each area from the public data that was available.  May be further break it down by specific skill sets or lines of business that the individual is more associated with in that profession.  This would help the dealer pitch the features that relate to his area and also let him know about other relevant services.

Another way is to provide timely updates on any information or news that our end-user would be interested in and ensure a mechanism to get it across to all dealers.

Help make these dealers be the one stop shop for those individuals for any questions related to their field even if they are not selling  a product in that area.  It could be as simple as knowing the best book store in town that keeps references and journals associated to your profession.

This would help strengthen the trust between the client and the dealer and in the process makes it a profitable venture to be in even at low volumes

Have you been in any similar business and how have you dealt with low volumes? Would love to hear your thoughts in the comments