Just curious if you have a timeframe for when the beta sign up’s are going to start being activated? New updates look awesome though, can’t wait to try them out !
This cool but when are you going to fix the BUSINESS TOOLS side of it! the program has so many nice features but is terrible in the business tools reports & live qty in the cart. I can’t even pull out what I have collected in sales tax every month, I am left to guess & overpay. This should be your main focus, we cannot stay in business if we cannot accurately control & track our money! I am seriously getting to the point of using another software & getting rid of inksoft, what a waste of time training my employees to use it.
I am really glad you asked this question. I am going to share some detailed insight so that you can understand that we are in agreement with you about Business Tools and that we have made the decisions we have based upon customer input from tickets, customer survey data, market and business value on behalf of our customers. These decisions are not off the cuff, they are calculated and methodical.
Our Roadmap decisions, as I mentioned, are based upon a number of very important factors that need to be given perceived value and then normalized. Business Tools has been in high-contention during these evaluation periods. In fact, our current Evaluation Matrix put half of Business Tools as current priority #4 on a list of over 16 possible projects. For the sake of transparency, the “Performance, Bugs and Issues Project” has a normalized rating of 84.14%. “Unified Checkout” has a normalized rating of 75.70%. “Product Pricing” was rated at 74.85%. Next, “Order Manager” is rated at 63.68%. What we are calling “Order Manager” is part of the current Business Tools umbrella.
As you described, Business Tools needs attention. We have been gathering ideas, creating task-flow and wireframes for what we are calling “Order Manager”. Order Manager has the following components: web orders, invoice orders, quoting, reporting, basic order management (approve, cancel, ship). Regardless of origin, orders need to be processed within the system fundamentally the same way. All down-stream processes like Work Orders and Packing Slips should work exactly the same way regardless if the order was created through invoice, PO or web. Reporting, as a consequence will also benefit from fundamentally re-writing Business Tools. What Order Manager does not address initially are things like Calendar, Shop-Work-Flows and/or Shop-Task-Flows. Those things extremely important too, but are separate from “Order Manager”. The current Business Tools UI strictly enforces a Step-Wise-Shop-Management, or production management, task-flow that works for some, but not for others. Because of this, we have evaluated and made huge advancements in the conception and philosophy of how shops can organize their production management. But I digress, what I want to explain is that we are separating the current “Business Tools” into two distinct parts that we need to perfect in sequence.
What will Order Manager do? First it will be delivered with fundamentally different web-application technologies. It will be easy to use. I will create a unified “order” regardless if the order originates from a PO, invoice or web-order. It will be easy to sort, filter and create reports from. It will integrate with ShipStation and Stamps.com. Most importantly, it will have very focused functionality: Approve Orders, Print Shipping Labels, Mark as Complete/Shipped/Done and the Reporting will give you the data on orders our customers have demanded.
Order manager will not have a calendar integration, it will not impose a hard-set, task-flow, work-flow. Having created rigid workflow software for Companies like Oce (Canon), wide-format. I know, first-hand, that every single print shop is different and that forcing our customers to use a 1-2-3-4 type Order management system that is not customizable is a huge mistake. We will not repeat that mistake here. Regardless, what Order Manager does not do (mentioned above) we do have plans for an extension that does along with much, much more. But first things first, Order Manager needs to be done the right way before we add the expansion pack.
As mentioned, Order Manager was rated at #4. As mentioned during the User Conference and in the recorded video, we have a dedicated staff of Developers and QA focusing on Performance, Issues and Bugs which is the #1 demand based upon our metrics. These staff members are currently assigned for the rest of the year on this Project. #3 is Product Pricing and we are currently in Open Beta! So within the next week or two, this Project will be off the list, making Order Manager #3 in level of metric importance. Currently #2, “Unified Checkout”, which contains Custom Checkout Pages, has just passed iteration 2 of Interaction Wireframing and is looking like we will begin development of this Project this quarter. Unified Checkout is a dependency for new Webstores, Updated Names and Numbers and Product Bundling. If the InkSoft Roadmap remains unchanged, Order Manager will follow these initiatives. We are currently making conscious choices not to add enhancements or new development initiatives that effect the current Business Tools. If there is a bug, we will fix it. But we don’t want to spend time adding very small improvements to that part of InkSoft when the developer efforts can make monumental and epic achievements with a methodical rewrite from scratch.
I know this is painful, but the long-term will be delivered faster if we focus on creating Order Manager in the near future as opposed to adding minor features and functions to current Business Tools. Of course, I am hear to field answers like this and am more than happy to do so with as much transparency possible. So if you have more questions, please share your thoughts and comments further.
Hey guys,
Just curious if you have a timeframe for when the beta sign up’s are going to start being activated? New updates look awesome though, can’t wait to try them out !
This cool but when are you going to fix the BUSINESS TOOLS side of it! the program has so many nice features but is terrible in the business tools reports & live qty in the cart. I can’t even pull out what I have collected in sales tax every month, I am left to guess & overpay. This should be your main focus, we cannot stay in business if we cannot accurately control & track our money! I am seriously getting to the point of using another software & getting rid of inksoft, what a waste of time training my employees to use it.
Kevin,
I am really glad you asked this question. I am going to share some detailed insight so that you can understand that we are in agreement with you about Business Tools and that we have made the decisions we have based upon customer input from tickets, customer survey data, market and business value on behalf of our customers. These decisions are not off the cuff, they are calculated and methodical.
Our Roadmap decisions, as I mentioned, are based upon a number of very important factors that need to be given perceived value and then normalized. Business Tools has been in high-contention during these evaluation periods. In fact, our current Evaluation Matrix put half of Business Tools as current priority #4 on a list of over 16 possible projects. For the sake of transparency, the “Performance, Bugs and Issues Project” has a normalized rating of 84.14%. “Unified Checkout” has a normalized rating of 75.70%. “Product Pricing” was rated at 74.85%. Next, “Order Manager” is rated at 63.68%. What we are calling “Order Manager” is part of the current Business Tools umbrella.
As you described, Business Tools needs attention. We have been gathering ideas, creating task-flow and wireframes for what we are calling “Order Manager”. Order Manager has the following components: web orders, invoice orders, quoting, reporting, basic order management (approve, cancel, ship). Regardless of origin, orders need to be processed within the system fundamentally the same way. All down-stream processes like Work Orders and Packing Slips should work exactly the same way regardless if the order was created through invoice, PO or web. Reporting, as a consequence will also benefit from fundamentally re-writing Business Tools. What Order Manager does not address initially are things like Calendar, Shop-Work-Flows and/or Shop-Task-Flows. Those things extremely important too, but are separate from “Order Manager”. The current Business Tools UI strictly enforces a Step-Wise-Shop-Management, or production management, task-flow that works for some, but not for others. Because of this, we have evaluated and made huge advancements in the conception and philosophy of how shops can organize their production management. But I digress, what I want to explain is that we are separating the current “Business Tools” into two distinct parts that we need to perfect in sequence.
What will Order Manager do? First it will be delivered with fundamentally different web-application technologies. It will be easy to use. I will create a unified “order” regardless if the order originates from a PO, invoice or web-order. It will be easy to sort, filter and create reports from. It will integrate with ShipStation and Stamps.com. Most importantly, it will have very focused functionality: Approve Orders, Print Shipping Labels, Mark as Complete/Shipped/Done and the Reporting will give you the data on orders our customers have demanded.
Order manager will not have a calendar integration, it will not impose a hard-set, task-flow, work-flow. Having created rigid workflow software for Companies like Oce (Canon), wide-format. I know, first-hand, that every single print shop is different and that forcing our customers to use a 1-2-3-4 type Order management system that is not customizable is a huge mistake. We will not repeat that mistake here. Regardless, what Order Manager does not do (mentioned above) we do have plans for an extension that does along with much, much more. But first things first, Order Manager needs to be done the right way before we add the expansion pack.
As mentioned, Order Manager was rated at #4. As mentioned during the User Conference and in the recorded video, we have a dedicated staff of Developers and QA focusing on Performance, Issues and Bugs which is the #1 demand based upon our metrics. These staff members are currently assigned for the rest of the year on this Project. #3 is Product Pricing and we are currently in Open Beta! So within the next week or two, this Project will be off the list, making Order Manager #3 in level of metric importance. Currently #2, “Unified Checkout”, which contains Custom Checkout Pages, has just passed iteration 2 of Interaction Wireframing and is looking like we will begin development of this Project this quarter. Unified Checkout is a dependency for new Webstores, Updated Names and Numbers and Product Bundling. If the InkSoft Roadmap remains unchanged, Order Manager will follow these initiatives. We are currently making conscious choices not to add enhancements or new development initiatives that effect the current Business Tools. If there is a bug, we will fix it. But we don’t want to spend time adding very small improvements to that part of InkSoft when the developer efforts can make monumental and epic achievements with a methodical rewrite from scratch.
I know this is painful, but the long-term will be delivered faster if we focus on creating Order Manager in the near future as opposed to adding minor features and functions to current Business Tools. Of course, I am hear to field answers like this and am more than happy to do so with as much transparency possible. So if you have more questions, please share your thoughts and comments further.