Where is Winnovate headed? This will be an interesting post to look back on in a few years. With 18 months equating to eternity in our industry, I hesitate to prognosticate, but here goes. It looks like a little bit more history will bridge the gap to the future here.
A bit more history...
After refocusing in fall 2006, that winter became a productive time of R & D for Winnovate. We looked at what had worked over the years of doing mostly custom work and identified a couple areas that could be systematized and packaged more as ongoing services instead of one time projects. The areas that boiled to the top were full-service web systems that fit the structure of 90% + of small businesses in
America and specialized web solutions for property managers and real estate agents.
When putting together these new systems, we followed three core principals. The systems must, above all, be highly usable. Ease of use, in my opinion, is the core of great design. Flexibility is another key ingredient. Because things change daily, even hourly, we had to put together systems that could handle rapid change. Last, but not least, these systems had to have some style. Of course quality was important too. In meeting the usability, flexibility, and style requirements, we were sure quality & stability would have to be there as well.
The birth of w360...
Based on those principles, we laid out a compressive website management system that supported the
Web 2.0 model. This system is called
w360. At w360's core, is a very easy to use, yet robust, content & document management system. In working with a few incredibly expensive, very hard to use CMS systems for my prior employers, I was aware of the dark side of systems like these and made sure to steer clear from there complicated, bloated approach to managing information. We are finding that end users, with limited computer experience, are able to intuitively understand many of the functions of w360 with no training and with limited training they are able to do some pretty powerful things such as, building & managing blogs, podcasts, vodcasts, newsletters, wikis, user forums, photo galleries, product galleries (eCommerce), custom forms, new website sections, and much more all from your own website, not multiple services.
Enough of the shameless promotion…I just get excited and have to dial back a bit.
To wrap up on w360, yes it is very easy to use. Lots of things in life are easy to use, but that doesn't mean you will be able to use them effectively. In looking at my existing clients and seeing what worked and didn't work for them, it became clear that for w360 to be successful, it needed to be more than just an easy to use, high performance machine. The system needed a human element for guidance and ongoing support…A success coach of sorts. I'd noticed that some of my clients had clear ideas of what they wanted to do on the web, and others just knew they needed to be on the web. So, looking at w360 from a service perspective, we added ongoing support and advice to the w360 service. We also knew that there were hundreds of details that go into creating the style of the website. So we decided to include complete custom site design as part of the service, instead of charging hundreds or even thousands of dollars for that service up front.
This was and remains a risky approach for Winnovate. If we do hours of setup and training work for new clients and they decide to leave, we lose. I was initially concerned about this. But, when I looked back over the years at our customer turnover ratios and found them to be extremely low, I stopped worrying and got excited again.
MultiFamily360
The other opportunity, mentioned earlier in this post, was for specialized web systems for property managers. Again, over the years, Winnovate has helped a number of property managers of several hundred units to use the web to interact with potential and existing renters. This started back in 2001 when we worked with a visionary property manager who helped create a web system. This system allowed renters to tour the property with floor plans, photo galleries, property maps, and a view each room of the model apartments via a 360 degree rotating view. Then, right when the potential renter was most excited to live there, they could fill out a complete online application which was placed in a queue for batch processing by leasing agents at their convenience. This allowed the leasing agent to pre-qualify the renter before even speaking with them. This system also allowed for residents of the property to submit service request that were again batched for processing by property management.
Because of the leverage the web system gave this initial property manager, she told her property management friends, and they rest is history. We did several of these systems, all by word of mouth referral. We had always done them on a project by project basis with an upfront cost and then ongoing hosting fees, but hadn't yet looked at offering this as a service. Out of this came MultiFamily360. Based on w360, MultiFamily360 offers several features just for property managers. Like w360, the setup and ongoing support is now rolled into a monthly service fee.
The Money Shot...
The future of Winnovate will be focused on helping clients build thriving communities of repeat customers. I believe w360 and MultiFamily360 are the right platforms to give our clients the web leverage necessary to achieve this goal and win in their industries.
This post was longer than I'd like and I will work to keep future posts shorter and sweeter. Thanks for reading.