The secret to success

Anytime you're wondering if the application or service you're working on makes any difference, consider the following:

British Telecom cobbled together a white pages application for internal use and launched it two years ago. Last month it handled over ten million (10,000,000) queries. 10 million! In one month! For an in-house-only white pages application!

That's more than 300,000 queries a day - how many times can someone look up an address or phone number?

The secret is that this " little white pages " application has turned into a " got to have it " information tool. While more than a third of the queries were of the " quick search for a name " variety, all of the other functionality was used, including:

* Powersearch

*

MyWhereabouts (synchronized with Outlook calendar)

* MyAddressbook

* MyAccount

* MyData

* MyPreferences

The secret here is to turn out a simple, but useful application fairly quickly (before users' interest can flag), and then steadily increase its functionality so that people are (seemingly) always learning about something new the " simple little app " can do. In no time at all, the users are telling you what new functionality they want and - more importantly - going to bat with your boss and her boss to make sure you have the time and resources to add their suggested " improvements. "

Everybody wins in a case like this: the users get an invaluable tool

, management gets greater productivity through the use of the tool and you get to spend all day playing around in the directory - and getting paid to do it! Life IS good.

Dave Kearns is a writer and consultant in Silicon Valley. His most recent book is "Peter Norton's Complete Guide to Networks" published by SAMS. Dave's company, Virtual Quill, provides content services to network vendors: books, manuals, white papers, lectures and seminars, marketing, technical marketing and support documents. Virtual Quill provides "words to sell by..." Find out more at Virtual Quill or by e-mail at info@vquill.com

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