Rewind: Rebuilding Own Web Now

This has been on the radar for months but I am now glad to announce that we’re (or rather, I am) going to be publishing the process of how we’re rebuilding Own Web Now. No company is perfect, no product is perfect, but it takes a long time to design something that is phenomenally successful. I’ve managed to do that, OWN is currently far ahead anything I even imagined when I started it. However, with tremendous growth come a number of changes and adjustements a company has to make in order to survive and to thrive.

Over the past two years I’ve gone out of my way to attend many IT conferences, learn from my peers, learn from my partners and learn from the people who run the orgainizations that I wish OWN was. So, over the next year I am going to be taking you through the good and through the bad of rebuilding Own Web Now Corp. We’ve identified the following big areas of improvement that we need to focus on:

Billing – We need to get the financial systems up to speed with everything we do as soon as possible. Like yesterday.
Communications – Communication with our partners and our clients needs to be improved. We do a lot already, prehaps better than 99% of the companies we get to deal with, but thats our mark and we are going to work on a better site, more podcasts, more video blogs.
Sales – We are working on improving how we handle, compensate and bill for the products and services we sell. It’s not a matter of “how do we help you sell more” but how do we get people to have a positive purchasing experience.
Documentation – My bag. Our products are ridiculously complex but we make it very easy to purchase, setup and take advantage of things like Exchange, Virtual Servers, Offsite backups. Yes, they are easy, but I can make it easier for SMBs to train their staff to work with our products. This indeed will be the major aspect of Vladville as well.
Partner Promotion – Two words for you: Thieving Weasel. Even though thats not the name of the network, partner promotion is going to change the landscape of the type of business we do and just how profitable we all are. I’ve been very fortunate to be promoted by many, many, many, many IT solution providers who truely became our partners. Now we get to turn the tables and promote those partners instead.

This years WWPC and TechEd were easilly the most valuable conferences I have ever been to. They gave me the technical knowhow to execute what I needed to and WWPC along with its many attendees really cemented my blueprint and put it into action.

So, I hope you enjoy it reading about it, I hope it is as much fun executing it.