Running a Small Business with Plone

Running a Small Business with Plone Sally Kleinfeldt, Jazkarta

Jazkarta • Open source technology web applications • Hosted solutions, consulting services, training and support • Plone, Zope, Python experts • Three full time, 5+ part time staff • Staff distributed across multiple locations

Plone Is Our Business • Our income is mostly from Plone-based products and services • We use our own products and services to run our business

Aspects of Running a Business • Operations • Marketing/Sales • Customers

Operations • Finance, records • Quickbooks (traditional) • Day to day work environment • Home ofﬁces, shared work spaces (no bricks and mortar)

Work Environment • Distributed work environment makes communication and collaboration key • Email • Chat • Calendars • Document management

Google Apps • Jazkarta.com domain • Gmail, chat, calendar, docs/spreadsheets, sites, start page • Search across all personal content • Standard Edition free, Premier Edition $50/user/year • Education, non-proﬁts get special deals

Gmail: Good UI, Great Search

Google Calendar: Supports iCal Standard

Google Docs: For Staff & Customers

Google Docs: Collaborative Editing

Google Docs: Spreadsheet to Form

Google Docs: Ofﬂine with Gears

Dropbox: Shared Filesystem

Google Start Page: Personal Dashboard

Google Sites: Company Intranet

Google Apps • What does this have to do with Plone?

Google Apps + Plone • Rich APIs for integration • Embed a Google Doc form on a page • Import Google Calendar to Plone Calendar • More examples later

Marketing & Sales • Internet plus word of mouth • Website • Ads • Emails • Managing customer relations • Managing sales

Website: Plone • Full featured content management system • Rich content with a marketing slant - products, services, news, team, case studies, newsletters, blog posts, etc. • Many add-ons • Secure, robust • Plone provides our public persona

Plone Hosting • Requirements • Reliability • Scalability • Ease of management

Plone in the Cloud • Hosted on Amazon EC2 • Buildout and fabric for deployment • Data.fs and Apache logs use Elastic Block Storage • Backups use S3 storage • 5 virtual servers: Apache/Pound/Varnish, ZEO, 3 clients

Advertising: Google Adwords

Emails: Vertical Response

CRM: Salesforce • Best of breed hosted solution (SaaS) • Powerful API that promotes integration • Manage contacts, leads, accounts, campaigns, business opportunities

Salesforce Out of the Box • Gmail - email Contacts • Google Docs - associate proposals, contracts with Accounts • Google Adwords - integrate with Campaigns • Vertical Response - email Leads • PayPal - pay for products

Salesforce + Plone • Salesforce Connector • PloneFormGen • SalesForceAdapter • For details see Andrew Burkhalter’s talk at 9:30 Thursday

Plone - Salesforce - VR Example • Plone form to capture prospective customer’s interest • Data goes into customized Salesforce Lead • Add Leads to Campaign • Send targeted information to Leads - training announcements, product announcements, newsletters

Customers • Flexible scope projects using agile methodologies • Multiple customers, projects, developers, project managers

Project Management: ClueMapper • Super-charged Trac across multiple projects • Hosted on Amazon EC2 • Personal dashboard showing all projects • Enhanced web-based management • AJAX UI for entering time • Lightning Talk today

ClueMapper: Future Plans • Integrate with 3rd party time tracking products • Harvest (Hosted solution) • SlimTimer (Trac plugin) • Integrate time tracking with QuickBooks

Conclusion • Plone + Salesforce + Google Apps + ClueMapper makes a powerful combination • Use Plone for the things it does well • Integrate other best of breed components • Choose the right tool for the task

Questions? sallly@jazkarta

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Running a Small Business with Plone

by Jazkarta, Inc. on Oct 27, 2008

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