Steve, Sean, and I were going over progress and ideas on merchant processing. We got a report from a client that they are using one of our gateway integrations and it has been going very good. We talked about progression and how the first one we did for a gateway, nobody knew about it. We then did a second integration for the same gateway using newer tech. That is the one that is going great. We may end up having to convert the company that is using the older integration to the code that is using the newer tech. Sometimes things get lost in the shuffle.

Steve was talking about interactions with 3rd party solutions and making sure that we have money and agreements done up front. We have had too many use us and/or stiff us. We need to cover ourselves.

We were talking about how quickly things change. We tend to build something or make an advancement and go right on to the next thing instead of trying to pitch it, market it, or get a return on our investment. part of that is personality, and part of that is just pressure (we need the next thing), and part of that is the lack of communication (what is new and cool and how do we get that word out?). Anyways, we are aware of it, we will need to keep working on it. Sometimes, we literally have golden nuggets and we just bury them or they get buried because so many other cool things are happening.

Both Steve and Sean are really trying to focus in on merchant processing and figure out a way to get something put together that is as easy as Square (simple POS system with integrated hardware and software - able to take credit cards on the fly) but as powerful as adilas. Just for fun, they were calling it the Square Crusher (aka a similar or competing product). Just being silly.

Cory joined the meeting and had a number of questions from some of our clients. She was asking both Steve and I about our takes on certain things. One of the email requests was dealing with discount campaign tracking and ways of using and tracking promotion codes. Cory and I will talk more about this next week. I have done a ton of this, with my other company, back in the day, but we don't have this built out for adilas or adilas clients yet.

One of the places that we are weak or not as strong is in the marketing and marketing tools for our clients. I'm forecasting, but I'll bet that we will see more of this type of promotion code tracking, flagging and tagging, and tag management stuff come across our plates in the next few months. It is important and seems to be heating up. We will build it out and make it part of our internal and ecommerce offerings. Plus, we'll try to market it ourselves... push it out there for others to use and see. We've got to start doing more of that kind of stuff.

The last major topic of the morning meeting was using API sockets. We tend to build API sockets for other outside parties to use (pull technology - they pull the data that they want based on settings and permissions). We also talked about using other 3rd party API sockets and being able to push updates and records as they happen (push technology - just in time and being able to control how much data is being pushed). We may have to find a mix of both options, but we need to remember that both options exist. We tend to see just one side.

Along with that, we have some clients that are getting bigger and bigger datasets. That becomes a problem. Say we design it so that an elephant could be moved from place to place. Without telling us, our clients move on from elephants, which are already huge, into whales that are four times as big as elephants (just an analogy of sorts). Anyways, there is a constant need to keep making the channels and pipelines bigger and bigger and faster and faster. If we exceed our limits, sometimes we have to keep modifying things and keep pushing our limits in order to get into the game. Hardly ever does it just sit still. Constantly moving targets.