I am on my way to New York to participate at the Always On Media event in New York.  But before arriving at that event (AO On Media ), my team will be participating in a very customer focused event in Baltimore.  

The 2 experiences are world apart.  In one event; there is a lot of crystal ball action. industry buzzwords and hype.  in the other event, its thousands of our users focused on simple things that they can do to grow their business and service their customers better.

A little bit of Etelos History-
Etelos has been working with Genworth Financial, since they were GE Capital Assurance... then GE Financial and now Genworth.   For many of the agents in the field Etelos has delivered a very sophisticated solution in an easy to use interface for nearly six years.  

Agents just enter in a contact, select a few check boxes and the system sends out emails, newsletters, surveys and more.  4 years ago, we integrated with a variable print vendor to deliver personalized paper newsletters that also automatically get mailed out.  Then hand written birthday cards, thank you cards, business letters and referral programs.  Postcards, and now personalized online brochures.  This whole experience has always been about the customer.  What does the user need and what needs to be done to deliver the features to fulfill their need.

The product is called followupsystems.net - and it does follow-up for sales reps.  Their are fancier looking systems, but probably not as feature rich. There are systems with better looking user-interfaces... but probably won't give as much value in as few clicks.

I was recently inspired about how important this whole idea in application design when reading about the success of Craigslist. The statement had been made that the site had all the beauty of a pipe wrench. Clearly demonstrating that its about what it does, more importantly than what it looks like.

When it comes to a business app, what it does is more important than what it looks like.  The utility and ease of use over flash and sophistication.

As I turn north towards New York from Baltimore, I will be leaving a culture of client focus and entering a world of inward focus.  Where business ideas get seemingly millions of dollars in funding of ideas that are chasing other ideas. To quote Jeffrey McManus, this is definitely an incestuous business.

Well, Etelos is focused on customers first.  We go to this event more as an evangelism program for those who are lost than we do for any type of business gain.  We are defining new possibilities in on-demand, customizable web applications.  

In the old days, they would call it a suite of applications, sophisticated and streamlined integration.  Today, we are SaaS and Mash-ups?  I am not a big fan of all the industry buzz words and hype.  I prefer the customer interaction versus industry accolades. Etelos is all about customer applications and customizing them to fit the unique needs of your enterprise. A unique marriage of open source, software as a service and custom development.  A choice on where the data lives and ownership of the licenses.  Freedom for developers to use different programming languages, package applications and distribute them in an online store.