How do you get small businesses to help in the testing & development of IT solutions

[digitel]

Hi,

My business, Digitel Solutions, is a provider of Internet-based business applications for SMEs. We want small businesses (the final users of our solutions) to work with us to test as well as develop these business applications. Does anyone have any suggestions on how to find SMEs that are willing to work with us?

We are willing to make the testing phase free and completely non-obligatory. Is there any other thing we need to do to encourage SMEs to participate? If you were the owner of a small business, what would be your main concern about participating in such a testing & development programme?

Any suggestions would be helpful.

Thanks in advance!

[Brian Turner]

I don't see people objecting to run at least a limited free trial - but, really, whatever the service is, requires far more explanation.

[digitel]

Hi,

Thanks Brian, for replying. Read some of your replies to posts that described their products and services too much, and mostly they were called SPAM So, did not want to be labelled a spammer

In more detail, our business provides Internet-based applications that tries to increase the productivity of employees by making them more mobile and independent. The applications really are targetted to the business to business (B2B) community.

For example, one way our solution makes employees more productive is by shifting data entry of orders to customers by encouraging EXISTING customers to place orders online via our solution. Sales personnel in the field are also able to place orders directly into the system via their mobile phones.

So, you get the idea of what we are trying to do. We are concentrating on making front line employees like sales people to be able to function without much support from admin staff. We do so by firstly, trying to reduce the amount of admin work like transaction processing and secondly, enable front line personnel to take over some of the admin work. We do not recommend that businesses sack their admin staff (because we feel that is just unethical) but hopefully with our solution, businesses may be able to convert their admin staff to be more sales oriented.

There is a whole range of applications we have developed so far, but I won't list them down here. Our website has information about them. But in essence, our solution aims at increasing employee productivity by trying to move them up the value ladder and equipping them with information to make better decisions.

The solution is currently being used by a Machine Tools business but we are looking for more testers. As I mentioned earlier, we are willing to commit resources to give a free and non-obligatory test/trial. The reason we don't just call it a trial is because it is not like most software providers who just leave you to set up the software yourself, but we are actually willing to work with the business to do some customisation. Basically, to make sure everything is up and running and ensuring that the financial returns are planned for.

Any suggestions on how to get testers are welcome. Thank you.

[jlknauff]

I would be willing to take a look at implementing your software. I briefly looked over your site and noticed you have some sort of CRM. Take a look at my site and tell me if what you have would work for the type of comapny that I have.

www.jeremy-lang.com

[digitel]

Hi jlknauff,

Thanks for replying. I have sent you a personal message (pm). I do not see any problems implementing our solution for your business. Get in touch with us and we can start the process of setting up our solution for your business. We look forward to working with your company.