1. ManagePro is like a seductive Jet, that doesn’t come with a pilot’s license

Part of what differentiates ManagePro from other products is how flexible (it will fly in any direction) and multi-featured (very capable) it is.  It can get you to 30,000 feet very quickly and just as quickly get you to ground level with a click of a button.   You can wrap it around your business process, your agenda.  You don’t have to wrap your business process around the program. 

Business owners, executives, CEOs, senior managers like it.  The concepts and functionality are very attractive.  It looks shiny, fast… powerful.  They taxi it back and forth a bit.  The leather smells great, those dials look very good.  And then it gets parked in the hanger.  Why?

The truth is that most of our customers are used to having other people do the work.  They function in a role that has them managing the workers, representing them, establishing direction, not driving the bus, or in this case the jet.  When they buy ManagePro, they don’t get a corporate pilot, they believe they or their staff will manage the “jet.”  In fact, they don’t learn to fly themselves very well, and then when they run into turbulence, sometimes on the very first flight, the whole experience starts looking pretty uncomfortable, if not a lot more work than anticipated.

This reflects a bigger truth, one that Gerber outlined in his book the E-Myth.  That being, that most of us, most business owners and executives don’t invest enough time working ON the business, we’re so easily consumed working in the business.

You buy something like ManagePro to be more effective in managing the business.  That requires working on the business, not in the business.  Working in the business is making the next sale, going to a meeting, answering the email that pour in, picking up that call.  If you don’t invest enough time to work on the business, you won’t invest enough time to competently pilot ManagePro, and it will get left to someone else, left in the hanger or used for taxing around the field.  That doesn’t generate big results or big numbers.

Contact ManagePro for more about office and project management software.

#2 ManagePro Represents a Structure for Inventing Your Future,
but Initially Exposes more than it Solves

ManagePro can represent the future to be achieved, both for the business and the people who resource it.  I’ve written about this one before, but in developing a structured outline of your business process and trajectory in ManagePro, two reality points can quickly and disarmingly surface.

1. Lack of Clarity – This reality, the fact that your business continues to funtion with a number of areas, decision points, processes, and strategic initiatives not clearly defined, can be quickly exposed in a flash and for many becomes an uncomfortable, “I should know this” moment:

1.  It may be a struggle to articulate a requirement spec or scope on your top projects
2.  You haven’t decided what the top 3-6 critical steps are to complete each of your strategic initiatives
3. You start listing projects, products and customers and you feel confused about where to store records… you can’t find things you put in yesterday
4. You would like to see scorecards, but you’re not sure how to measure what’s important, and are unsure of how you would go about getting the information
5. You start developing the structure in ManagePro, but never get beyond Titles and some to-dos…

2. Lack of Engagement and Alignment – Introduction of ManagePro and the accompanying shifts in how work is managed, documented and measured, surfaces the fact that some members of the organization are not in the boat.  They aren’t as aligned or engaged or committed as you would wish.  Introducing ManagePro and the required change process serves to expose the gaps in engagement very quickly.

What do most of us do when feeling exposed?  We cover-up, we withdraw.  “I’ll get back to this later.”  In reality what would be best is to admit we need help, and the exposure means there are lots of areas that need attention in working on the business.

What also gets exposed is that without someone regularly working with you to address those areas, we all get busy with day-to-day stuff and it gets covered up again.  There really is something to the notion that if it’s not on your schedule, it’s not going to happen, and that accountability to someone else helps all of us achieve our goals a little, sometimes a lot, easier.

#3 Rodney Brim and Your Commitment to Act is a Bigger Resource
than the Software

Working with Rodney as your advisor, and implementing what the two of you discuss, is a much stronger predictor of success than using ManagePro alone.  Most of our customers don’t realize that.  He’s not only the guy behind the software for the last 10 years, but he’s the guy who’s consulted with everyone big and small, from Warner Bros to the United Nations.  He’s the guy who was a very successful psychologist for 20 years before re-inventing himself as a management consultant, and then again as the CEO of Performance Solutions Technology.

He’s the guy you want in your corner, helping you take advantage of all the capability in ManagePro, and helping you navigate the challenges between now and inventing your future.  The reality is that if more of our customers used him, we would have more successes like Avaya.  We want you to have that type of multi-million dollar success.  But he’s busy and expensive, so what are you going to do?

Ah, back to the jet imagery again.  Except this time it’s the fractional jet model. Instead of having Rodney work sequentially with one or two large installations a year, we want to leverage his skills to more of our customer base, and set up a schedule where for 10 companies he’s on your team, every week for 2, 4 or 8 hours, helping you architect your future in 2008 at a price you can afford.