I’ve never been one to make New Year’s resolutions. But this year I need to make a couple.
2011 brought about major change for Great Spirit Systems as we launched our long announced MissionConnect software with 13 of our customers. This brought major change to these customers as well.
We still have six more customers to convert over to MissionConnect. We also have some MissionBase modules yet to convert with the accompanying customer conversions, and many loose ends to tie up related to MissionConnect. Beyond that, we have accumulated many new ideas and projects that were held off these past three years, while we waited on getting our software into a current development platform from which we can develop “anywhere access” to the data that you, our customers, need in order to enhance your ministries.
We know that in some cases we have left you with inconvenient work arounds and less than optimal solutions. Quite frankly, I had not fully realized how refined a product MissionBase had become until we began hearing from those of you on MissionConnect about little but important things like data entry “flow”, report options, multiple access points to some parts of the data, and other refinements that had been added to MissionBase over the years and then forgotten about by us, because stuff that works doesn’t get much attention. You have let us know clearly about many of these items that are missing in MissionConnect, and we are now working to add them into our new software.
So my first resolution for 2012 is to focus our efforts hard during the first half of the year on completing these software conversions, completing the incomplete modules, and adding all of those “missing pieces” that we’ve heard about from our MissionConnect customers.
We’re anxious to get on to the exciting, new, ministry enhancing applications that have been asked for and dreamed about. However, we must first get the foundational parts of MissionConnect complete, lest we build a “house upon the sand.”
My second resolution is to communicate better as we move forward. I want to keep you better informed of our progress, and we at GSS need to create a better mechanism for two-way communication with you, our customers. The only way we can develop our software in the direction our customers need, especially in those new, ministry enhancing applications for better access to data and information, is to become better at gathering your ideas and allowing you to help develop us the raw ideas and dreams into solid specifications for new software applications. Some people would call this process the “incubation of ideas.” I prefer to think of it as gathering the fresh ingredients into a large soup pot where they can simmer, exchange flavors, and cook up into some truly great software to nourish your ministries in ways not previously possible.
Let us know what you think.
Al
