Long meeting between Steve, Cory, and I. Cory was reporting on tons of different projects and getting our input and suggestions. We covered tons of different topics. Here are some of my notes (from 10 pages of post-it notes - didn't know it/we would cover so much). The original meeting was only setup for an hour. It went a wee bit over... :)

- Talking about tons of custom label options. More talks about what to do with Calvin's custom label builder. We've spent a lot of money there and want to really get a return on that investment.

- We talked about bringing projects more internally with our guys and breaking things into smaller and smaller pieces.

- On labels, we had a request to be able to do serialized labels (up or modify counts and counters based on batches or packages).

- Using tons of our existing tools and refining those pieces. We have a ton of tools in the shed (virtually).

- Lots and lots of talks about breaking up the bigger projects into multiple smaller pieces. Along with that, we need to be able to charge money for bigger estimates. Everything takes time and effort. Either that or be able to recoup the amount within the bid or estimate.

- If we are doing real custom work, we need to charge for that. Often, we end up taking a hit.

- The trend seems to be (globally) transactions and details going into aggregates and summaries. We have had so many 3rd party analytical companies wanting to use our API sockets to harvest and use our great data sets. We would like to do a bunch of that analytical work inhouse vs farming it out to a 3rd party. All of these 3rd parties are just working for individual companies, but you can see the trend happening. Our clients are really wanting to get to the business intelligence level (BI) for viewing their data, snapshots, counts, summaries, and other aggregated data or stats.

- We went over some pros and cons of using the adilas API sockets. Back and forth on monetizing those channels and also making sure that they don't get abused or flooded.

- Lots of talks about the item catalog and the image catalog. As we use more and more API sockets, we could really use bigger and bigger bulk tools to help with data standardization and speed of deployment. Lots of positives. We, as a company, could also sell more systems if we brought in the enterprise level (way up - cascading info down to lower systems). Good stuff.

- More bulk standard tools. This just adds to the votes for building out the value add-on core model with different levels. Just as a recap - the value add-on core model deals with 5 known levels. They are: 1. Transaction core (current adilas system), 2. Industry specific skin, tools, and features. 3. Any custom code on top of the main system. 4. BI - Business Intelligence levels (stats, sums, counts, averages, mins, maxes, aggregates), and 5. Enterprise levels - connecting multiple worlds in a hierarchical type system (roll ups, roll downs, transaction corps/worlds, aggregates and sum corps/worlds - also dealing with permissions and access). We really want this type of a system for our future fracture project. We already have a number of pieces to this project (all kinds of prototypes spread all around the system), it just isn't all put together. That would be so awesome, clean, powerful, and hopefully pretty!

- We spent some time talking about our clients. Sometimes they get pretty creative. That is both good and bad. If they get creative, and find errors or break things, we just fix them and keep going. Other times, they totally use certain tools in ways we never would have imagined and/or foreseen. That can get interesting.

- There have been some requests for bulk tools for updating sub attributes and bulk sub inventory tools.

- Cory kept asking - Who are we? We tend to build generally but then we have all of these industry specific demands that keep coming at us. It makes it really hard to know where to focus. We really need to decide who we are and then hopefully that or those choices will help guide us.

- Dealing with Metrc (state compliance systems), we've had the request to build out more individual user type functions. This is dealing with more employee/user type permissions and settings. Currently, most of our Metrc transactions are done on a corporation or world level. The new requests are to do the exact same things but break it down on a per person basis. That sounds awesome, but that could be hundreds of thousands of dollars in development. We would have to create the one-to-many relationship, make sure that they were valid, then sync up users and permissions between systems in order to play. Then, to further make it kinda crazy, you would have to check user permissions (remotely) then attempt the connection, then if it failed, figure out if there was a global (higher up) option that you could do so that it wouldn't break all of our code and processes. It could be a huge project. Lots of unknowns. As part of this project, we would also have to add more history tables, who did what, who changed what, who has permission to do what, and making sure that each individual keeps their keys and tokens updated. It sounds like a small nightmare.

- We seem to build in general and then use it specifically as needed. Custom code on top of our own standard package, tool, or feature.

- Going over the cost of building and building. One you have to build it, then you have to maintain it, and upgrade and support it. The costs keep increasing. This topic lead us back to questions about who are we and where should we be focusing?

- There is a growing need to use asynchronous type loading like AJAX or some way of breaking huge datasets into smaller pieces. It is totally common for us to need to show or export 10,000+ or even 100,000+ records at a time. The current process tries to take that whole thing as a single bite or single attempt. It's just too large and slows things down.

- Some time was spent talking about loyalty points and keeping track of the total liability. More talk about other reports that show sums, grouped values, look-back capable reports, and using ACV (actual cash value) for recording loyalty points. We do a bunch of that, just refining the process and making it even smoother.

- Need for messaging or using the message marketing features that we have already built. There is a growing need for push notification and two-way communications outside of the main app or website. The client portal is growing in needs and options. More mobile ready or full mobile pieces are going to be coming down the pipeline. Everything seems to be trending in that direction.

- Question - do we fill in the gaps on functionality or try to update the look and feel? It sure would be awesome if we could virtually turn things on/off based on the UI (user interface) and settings. We would love to set things up super simply and then let the users add on or take away from our smaller base level. A new mini version of the shopping cart is in great need of these fracture type level settings. Start small and simple and then let the users build on or configure things as needed. Hide anything that we can unless asked for. Then when it is done (using the tool or feature), it can be hidden again. Every page needs show/hide options on a per page or per section level. Totally customized.

- Along with the show/hide options talked about above, it would be so cool to show all of the options and then say - what do you want? You tell us. More fracture stuff (where we are headed). Mountains and iceberg analogy stuff (it still needs to be there, but what is shown and/or exposed).

- We talked about extra costs and prices for some of the other add-on tools and functions. Some of our stuff (tools and features) takes a major amount of work and effort. We would love to sell more training, consulting, automation, and other professional services.

- News and updates and the importance of keeping our users up to date and informed. This seems to be a constant need and keeps evolving. Content and making and creating new content (creation and maintenance).

- Lots of talks about prioritizing efforts for different persons (parties). Diving out responsibilities and sharing info across departments and across people (users).

- Using videos - the value of education and training. Selling our other services. Scheduling and setting up ongoing training efforts. We would love to make lots of polished smaller videos. Laying it all out for our clients (on demand education or just in time education). We could really use our website to toot our stuff for different business verticals. For example: Revamping our manufacturing site and pages. We can handle... (fill in the blank) for manufacturing or whatever. That is a deep pool (manufacturing and production type businesses). The trend seems to be leading us more in that direction.