A Nice Start to 2006
Call Center Magazine just gave FootPrints it's Product of the Year
Award for 2006.
In addition, the Forrester Research Wave report on Service Desk chose
FootPrints as a Market Leader in the Small Enterprise category and as a
Strong Performer in the Large Enterprise category.
These awards have a lot to do with the strength of the product, but they
also have a lot to do with our product philosophy and company philosophy.
Here's what I mean:
- You can download and install a FootPrints full-strength demo in just
a few minutes with all the FootPrints functionality. You can set it
up yourself using the "Getting Started Guide" and you can start using it
in testing or real-life mode immediately with little work.
This was a guiding principle when we wrote version 1: Download
demos, ease of install, ease of admin (and of course with no
loss of functionality in the demo version).
I sometimes get an email from a new customer, it goes something like
this: "I wanted a Service Desk solution, but I am very hands on, I
wanted to download it, set it up myself, manage it myself, and make
a decision based on what I saw. I just bought FootPrints without ever
talking to a UniPress person."
- You can integrate FootPrints with other applications with little or
no programming. I'm thinking here of the Dynamic LDAP Address Book
Link and the Dynamic SQL Link. No programming, but direct access to
other databases to integrate information into FootPrints. You can
also integrate FootPrints with your XML Web Services enabled application
with little programming -- and I know customers who've cut and pasted
the Web Services client examples in the FootPrints documentation (for
java, C#, perl or php) and had their integrations done in minutes.
Our philosophy has been to make it easy yet powerful. I am
pleased with the success we've had with this.
- You can host FootPrints yourself or we'll host it for you. This speaks
about our company philosophy more than anything: When customers asked
us to host the FootPrints they'd purchased or were thinking of
purchasing (usually, they've had limited IT resources), we jumped in,
set up a hosting service, and gave them what they needed.
Forrester noted this as one of FootPrints' high points.
It's a great start to 2006. Write to me at msk@unipress.com, I'd like to
hear from readers.