2/22/10

2/22/10 – Progress review, bought “staffbot.com” domain name and finished registering the company with the IRS and Logan city. Discussed pricing structure with mike young and how beta testing and figuring out what really our product is worth. Everyone is to bring $40.00 to contribute to the companies initial investment of purchasing domain name and web hosting. Steve is going to look into getting business cards. Ben is going to go to the bank on wednesday before class to open our business account so we can start paying our "payables".

Logo??

Just something I put together.. Something simple to play with

Journal Entry

Journal Entry for 2/6/2010
The team met today to discuss the StaffBot business plan.
We combined and revised the sections for marketing,
operations, finance, mission statement, and the business description.
We also went over contingency plans and possible exit strategies.
It has been a challenge to think of this project in terms of
a class assignment because of its potential to become a fully
operational and profitable business.
We will also be meeting on Monday after class to do a brief
presentation in preparation for Wednesday.

Another Update

I have a contact that has "connections" with the university scheduler for the library and
certain computer labs.
The current software that they use is called "whentowork.com", again, all of the details of
their entire operation are posted online.
One of the complaints he had about their system is that they're unable to divide shifts up.
What I mean by that is if you can only work for three out of the five hours you were scheduled,
then the only way you can do that is by paying the company an outrageous licensing fee. I guess it's an extra feature. It's also a little rustic and not user friendly.
Anyway, I think you guys should look at the website, there is some entertaining information there. Apparently there automatic schedule feature was created by a group of mathematicians and PhDs.... haha good work Jeremy!

Google Cal link

We need to be able to link up employees' schedule with Google calendar.

We Need Names....

everyone put in some input on some possible names for the company, possible names for the program and some possible domain names.

Software competitors

I looked up some other companies out there that are currently doing
what it is that we want to.
One of the bigger ones I found was www.shiftboard.com.
They've got a pretty extensive website that basically
gives out a lot of information about their services, accomplishments,
and even their pricing structure.
I also talked to my roommate, who worked at Olive Garden, and
quizzed him about their online scheduling system. He said that's the
central hub where they check their schedules, ask for days off,
find out about specials that are offered to employees, evaluate
employee benefits, and whole bunch of other things for management.
Anyway, I thought these were some interesting things to consider
and possibly implement into what we want to do.

Toughts

From seeing what "mad skillz" everybody has, the recurring theme is some type of management experience. We had an idea that would make this company a consulting group and that's where I think it should go. There is such a plethora of things we can do, but we won't know a focus until we actually get in to some businesses to see what their needs are. I have a feeling that we are going to have to customize everything we do to each business. We need to find out if there is a true need for custom programs. Give our programmer(s) a heads up on where we want to go. Come ready on Wednesday with your version of where we need to go from here. We need to do some physical market research. Go out and visit potential clients. Bring your rolodex.

Location

I've talked with Mike Young about where we are able to license our business. He has stated that he doesn't care where we do it. I bring this up, because Providence/Smithfield are cheaper to license a business in than Logan. Does anybody have any connections up here to people in those towns that would be willing to let us license our business using their address?

Experience

What does everyone have experience in?

Who can design/maintain a website?
IT?
Lawn Mowing?

Foundation

Here's a shot from the hip, I think as a foundation for the business we should focus on employee management. Building upon what Jeremy said, tracking time and conveying schedules would be a couple issues employers always struggle with. I think we should focus around that. (That's just my opinion). Consulting and overall business analysis are great ideas, and we need to use a little bit of that to get customers. But what is going to be our revenue driver? Once we get good at that, let's add on as fast as possible.

off the topic

Just another Idea that has nothing to do with our first ideas.. but maybe could be a source of some cash flow.. But I was thinking of doing an Aggie app for usu students, the app could include the active buss map that shows the locations of the aggie shuttles. Also i have heard some feed back from many students that the way that student voting takes place online is bogus.. So we could have a place for students to vote on their iphones or blackberrys.
..

Employee Center

I have a few ideas for a human resource management application. The program would have a similar feel to that of facebook, this would require less time to train employees that have had experience with the FB. In this application there would be a large focus on task accomplishment and internal communication. Also a scheduler will help managers communicate work schedules to employees.
Jeremy

ideas...

Hey guys,
I'm sitting here at work and I had some ideas come to mind so I thought that
I better write them down somewhere.
I just took corporate finance last semester and we went over a lot of financial ratios (you guys probably know all about this), current/quick ratios, debt to asset, inventory turnover, etc. I think it would be cool if we were to have some of these kinds of data available to the small business owner so they can quickly identify the health of their business and any problem areas they may have.
Just a thought, let me know what you guys think.
Ben

First Post

Hey Guys! Welcome to our think blog. Here we can post a topic and we can all comment on it easily. Lets try to at least post something every other day concerning the project. If you worked on something, blog it. If you had an idea about anything that we could do, blog it. This will a valuable tool to help us save time in our meetings and also allow us to meet less often.

Lets all keep up the energy for the project. I am sure that we are going to have success.