Archive for March, 2008
Our user community provides us with vital feedback that often shows up in the Mumboe application in the form of new features. That’s because, at Mumboe, we use an iterative development process, which means changes and updates get pushed to the application every few weeks. Without your feedback, our development team is left to their own devices, which means you could potentially log in to your Mumboe account one day and see new features such as:
- Guitar Hero III integration
- API for a remotely controlled margarita machine
- Helicopter simulation
You get the idea. While these may all sound like cool ideas, we need to help the Mumboe development team focus on the features that are most useful to our customers – you know, the ones managing business agreements. And while I’m the first to admit that managing agreements is definitely not as fun as playing Guitar Hero III, that is in fact what we’re here to do.
During the Mumboe Beta Trial, we received valuable feedback from our users. Even in the short time since Mumboe’s public launch, I can point to changes and new features in the application that were directly related to a user speaking up and making a suggestion or comment.
You, too, can participate and make your voice heard. If you are a registered Mumboe user, take a moment to go to the Mumboe Support site and participate in the customer forums. You may see one of your suggestions show up as a feature the next time you log in. (If you don’t have a Mumboe account yet, you can sign up for free at www.mumboe.com/products_express.php.)
I can’t promise that every suggestion will show up as a feature, but I can promise that we will try our best to respond in a timely manner and let you know where we stand on your request. And if it hasn’t been stressed enough to you, remember that your feedback is what drives our development road map. So please let us know which features and/or changes to the application that you would most like to see.
March 31st, 2008
Author: James
Since we launched just over a week ago, Mumboe has been generating some great buzz in the press. PC World ran a terrific, detailed article that really hit on the business problem Mumboe addresses and the value of our solution. It’s always gratifying when a busy editor with probably a million other to-do’s on his/her plate not only takes the time to look at your app but really “gets” what it is supposed to do. Rafe Needleman at Webware also gave us some great coverage leading up to and following our presentation at Under the Radar (he was a moderator at the event). A mention on Technorati has also been generating some buzz. Of course, all of this means means we’re reaching more potential customers, and the sign-up rate for our free Mumboe Express account continues at a brisk pace.
March 27th, 2008
Author: admin
When people hear or read about Mumboe’s ability to let customers collaborate and share business agreements online, one of the questions we inevitably get asked is, “How secure is it?”
Security is a requirement that all SaaS companies must address, and when you’re dealing with a company’s legal agreements, it’s even more important. Fortunately, the popularity and success of other on-demand software companies before us like Salesforce.com has spurred the development of robust SaaS security solutions.
The truth is that many of the companies we talk to don’t currently have a secure solution for storing and sharing their business agreements; most are stored on individual hard drives or in filing cabinets with minimal security. And when a company needs an agreement reviewed or signed, they simply email or fax it to the individuals involved.
In contrast, Mumboe provides industry-leading security measures to protect our customers’ data throughout the agreement lifecycle. These include 256-bit encryption, password-protected accounts, permission-based control over who has access to specific files and folders, and a detailed audit trail of every change and revision made to a document. In addition, Mumboe partners with companies like SunGard and Iron Mountain for availability, offsite backup and disaster recovery services.
To get the full details, check out our Security page here.
March 27th, 2008
Author: admin
We just got back from Mountain View and the Under the Radar event where we officially launched Mumboe to the public. Airports were crazy, I guess it’s the Easter weekend travel rush. We participated along with 31 other companies, mostly from Silicon Valley, but a few from the Portland and Seattle areas and one from Reno, Nevada. A lot of great applications were discussed/demoed.
Each of the presenting companies was given 6 minutes to present and 8 minutes to take questions. It proved an interesting challenge to distill your company story down to that timeframe, especially for the more complex business software plays, and it was fascinating to see how the different companies handled it – some better than others. The conference format split the companies into 8 groups, but it could have easily been a dozen or more. There were a few next-gen presentation applications, and enough marketing/analytics apps that they took one out of the Marketing category and slotted it into our Managing Up session.
We took it as a good sign that our presentation generated a lot of questions from the audience, mostly focusing on our target market and competition. Kara Swisher of the All Things Digital blog was one of our judges and said she thought the space we were in is “very hot right now.” You can see a video clip of part of our presentation here. She must be right, we had lots of folks come find us after the presentation to tell us that it resonated with their own business challenges. Overall we were very pleased with the event and the quality of the companies presenting there. Rafe Needleman of CNET’s Webware , who gave Mumboe a preview on his blog earlier in the week, also gave an update on Mumboe.
Out of the other presenting companies, there were a few that really stood out for me (although not all got a judges’ nod). One was LiquidPlanner, a web-based project management software company. Bruce Henry gave a terrific, engaging presentation that deserved more recognition than it got. Act-On Software also gave a solid showing of their impressive marketing automation software.
A company called TripIt generated a lot of enthusiasm. It’s a very clever app that aggregates all your different travel reservations and plans (plane, hotel and car reservations, confirmations, plus a ton of other info) in one place, then integrates other useful features like local weather and an iCal feed. I signed up and tried it out. Cool app. NetBooks made an impressive show with a product that looks similiar to QuickBooks Online but offers broader functionality including marketing, sales and inventory modules.
I guess that I could go on all day about the great companies and apps on display, so I’ll summarize by saying check out the companies that participated at the UTR web site. I know you’ll find more than a few of them interesting and potentially useful.
March 21st, 2008
Author: Bill
Drum roll, please. No, it’s not a protest. I’m excited to announce that the Mumboe application now supports custom (or user-defined) fields. An account administrator can now create a custom field and associate the field with one or more agreement types. Previously, Mumboe included a standard list of fields (a very generous list, I might add), but now you have the ability to create your own custom fields, which can be used for searching and reporting purposes. Yes, there are some limitations at this point, but we will be expanding what you can do with the custom fields in the near future. For now, it’s worth noting that Mumboe supports: true/false (or boolean), dates, currency, pick lists (or enumerated lists), number and text data-type fields.
Example: If you want to track which region your sales agreements come from, you can now create a custom field called Region. And we can make the Region field a pick list with values including: North, South, East, West. That means that, for each of your sales agreements, you can populate this data and it will now be available for searching as well as for reporting purposes.
March 20th, 2008
Author: James
We get a lot of questions about Mumboe’s target market and how we’re different from free apps like Google Apps or Zoho. We admire what these companies are doing, and as a web app, Mumboe has many similar features like web-based collaboration and workflow. But Mumboe was designed as a specialized application aimed at helping companies track and manage legal documents – what we call business agreements. Just as Salesforce.com delivers specific functionality for sales organizations and accounting departments use applications like QuickBooks to handle their finances, Mumboe is built around the premise of managing business agreements. We designed the product as a web application so that any business that needs an easy to use, affordable solution could use it. What we’ve discovered is that this model is appealing to a range of customers from small business owners to corporate departments and mid-sized enterprises. We call them “corporate consumers,” because they are often individuals or small groups who can purchase a Mumboe account with a credit card and start using it right away.
March 19th, 2008
Author: admin
Since we are based here in Austin, SXSW is almost mandatory for us here at Mumboe, especially the Interactive part of the conference. Jason Fried of 37signals delivered a great presentation on Saturday afternoon, discussing his company’s vision on development, products and approach to work. Lots of Rails developers were in attendance, as would be expected.
Sunday was the notorious Mark Zuckerberg interview by Sarah Lacy. Wow, that was the craziest thing I’ve seen at a conference. Things got really intense almost immediately. What started as a low-level mumur during the first 15 minutes or so turned into shouts by the 40 minute point. Total Battle Royale by the end of it. Of course, it was all anyone could talk about afterward. I saw her at one of the parties, and the video bloggers were all over her. She seemed in good spirits, all things considered.
Hopefully the hoopla over the interview doesn’t overshadow what turned out to be a great conference. There were 15-20 interesting things going on every hour from 10am to 6pm. Almost forgot, awesome presentation by our friend Lindsey Simon from Google on Saturday morning. If you’ve never been to the conference before (and even if you have) I highly encourage you to put it on your calendar for next year. Lots of fun and some great content.
March 17th, 2008
Author: Bill
We went to the OpSource SaaS Summit a couple of weeks ago. Interesting stuff. I wasn’t surprised by all the “cloud” talk, but I was surprised at the level of competition that has emerged in the area of hosting. OpSource basically had all their competitors there talking about solutions for SaaS companies: SAP, IBM, OpSource, Adobe, and SalesForce.com all participated in a panel and essentially all have products and services for SaaS providers.
Lots of good stuff during this day and a half event. Jim Steele of Salesforce.com spoke about building a platform (Force.com) and a SaaS market place (AppExchange). Josh James of Omniture had a hilarious presentation which included some Talladega Nights clips. His presentation was a big hit and he had a lot of good advice for start-ups. He also had an interesting “magic number” discussion about quarterly revenue increase vs. marketing spend.
I’d recommend this conference regardless of whether you’re an OpSource customer. Lots of good presentations from some heavy hitters.
March 17th, 2008
Author: Bill
We’re thrilled that the folks at Dealmaker Media have invited Mumboe to their Under the Radar conference, an annual event held in Mountain View, CA that unveils “bleeding edge” startups. They found us during our beta trial and invited Mumboe to present at the conference on March 20th. We get six minutes to present our solution to the panel of judges, and eight minutes to take questions. Other companes that have made their debut at UTR conferences in the past include blinkx, Flickr, Kaboodle, Photobucket, Writely and Zimbra. We’re looking forward to the opportunity to present our solution to the conference judges, who include editors from BusinessWeek, CNET/Webware, Fast Company and the Wall Street Journal. Tune in later this week to see how we fare!
March 17th, 2008
Author: Bill
Businesses are catching on to the idea that software doesn’t have to be expensive to buy, painful to implement and a headache to maintain. Applications like Salesforce.com, Office Live and Google Apps are changing the game. We like the idea that software should serve its customers, not the other way around. If you’re still wondering what all the SaaS buzz is about, check out the article “13 Habits of Highly Effective SaaS Companies” here.
March 17th, 2008
Author: Bill
