User Spotlight: Zapproved drives e-procurement for Citrus Connection

In the west central Florida city of Lakeland, when people want to move around they use Citrus Connection, the county’s largest mass transit authority. Now when Citrus Connection wants to move to purchase something, they use Zapproved.

Shortly after we launched Zapproved, Adam Goldman, the chief procurement officer for Lakeland Area Mass Transit District which operates as Citrus Connection, read about us at C|NET.com’s Webware site and decided to check out Zapproved. After testing out the tool, Adam has implemented it to manage the procurement requisitioning process online for his agency.

“For our purposes, Zapproved is a good fit and we adopted it among my team very easily for our requisition process,” said Adam. “I like the great UI and the emails are superior to other workflow tools because of their directness.”

Adam has created in Zapproved a process for managing decision-making on purchasing. After completing a purchase request, the form is attached to a proposal and distributed to the appropriate team members who approve the request. After the purchase request is approved by Finance, an accounting code is added to the record in order to complete the audit trail.

He has also provided many new ideas that our team is working on implementing which will make Zapproved better adapted to serving this role. We’ll be working to add them to Zapproved in the near future.

In the meantime, thanks to Adam and the rest of the Citrus Connection team that has embraced Zapproved. They are showing the flexibility of the app and how it can easily adapt to drive internal processes.

Do you have an interesting implementation of Zapproved? Send us a message at myidea@zapproved.com and we’ll get in touch!

Got Inbox Zero?

Hey you “Inbox Zero” folks, we’ve added a new feature with you in mind. Now you have the freedom to click one button and close or archive multiple proposals from your Message Center.

To Archive, check the box next to any proposal that you’ve responded to, or that is closed or cancelled. Then click the Archive button just below the Message Center tab. If the originator of a proposal makes any changes to the proposal and needs futher input the proposal will move back to your inbox and Message Center.

Proposals are automatically closed once all recipients have approved. As the originator, you can manually close proposals by checking the box in the left column and select the Close button just below the Message Center tab. This will end the discussion and no one will be able to respond or change their response once the proposal is closed.

What else would you like to do from the Message Center? Send your thoughts to myidea@zapproved.com.

New Features Streamline Zapproved

We are pleased to announce today that we added a number of features that will make Zapproved easier and faster for you to use.  All of these new concepts were requested by our user community as a way to meet their needs.  Thanks for taking the time to send us your ideas at myidea@zapproved.com!

Following are the highlights of what we added to Zapproved:

Fully Integrated Proposal Format — All of the information you need is now found in one place in View Proposal. We’ve included the full text of the original proposal and the entire comment thread.

Build Contact Groups — In Contacts, you can select the “Add Group” button and create distribution lists of people in your address book.  This will save you time when sending proposals to regular groups of contacts.

Single-click Closing and Archiving — Now you can achieve “zero inbox” by closing and archiving messages quickly.  Just check the selection box and click the “Archive” or “Close” buttons at the top of the table.

Add and Merge Email Accounts — If you want to add an email address to your account, or even combine two accounts, visit My Settings and choose “Email addresses” from the sub-menu.  You will be able to manage all of your approvals in one place.

Try out these new features and tell us what you think. We will be adding mini-tutorials on our blog to walk through each of these features.

If you have other thoughts, send us an email at myidea@zapproved.com. We’re waiting to hear from you!

The Scoble Theorem of Enterprise Email

On October 9, top tech blogger Robert Scoble wrote a post regarding a question he was asked during an appearance at Cisco this week about applying Web 2.0 techniques in the enterprise.  His response struck a chord with us at Zapproved.  He replied that “every day I’d try to come up with some way to avoid using email.”  To top it off, he gave the problem a great name: The Enterprise Email Crisis.

 

Reading Scoble’s overview of the problem mirrored many of the same observations we had when designing Zapproved.  Email is a great tool, but in today’s enterprises it is introducing massive inefficiencies into the system.  Scoble labels it the “n*n problem” which encapsulates his hypothesis that the number of emails generated by a group is equal to the number of people squared.  He describes a hypothetical news release approval in which 10 approvers generate 100 emails ― plus a huge headache because of version control issues.  

 

Hmm, I think we should all start calling this The Scoble Theorem of Enterprise Email. I’ll get working on the Wikipedia entry right away.

 

Back to the issue of email. I’ve experienced it. I’m willing to bet that if you’ve worked in a company that has its own parking lot that you’ve lived it too.  It’s a problem that needs a solution and therein lies our opportunity.  We feel like we are building an ideal platform to solve this problem with Zapproved.  It’s lightweight, simple, puts a sharp focus on decisions, reduces loose ends, and keeps everyone working on a centralized document.

 

As Scoble concludes: “I am looking for companies that solve REAL pain in enterprises and that deliver real benefits to bottom lines and productivity. It’s going to be those companies that will survive lean times…”  Even in re-reading those words, it makes us want to work even harder because we have a great opportunity in front of us.  We ARE one of those companies.

 

Stay tuned, Mr. Scoble, you’ll be hearing a lot more about Zapproved soon.

Importing Contacts: A jumpstart into Zapproved

Looking for a quick and easy way to get started with Zapproved? We suggest importing your contacts from Outlook so that they will be one click away. Then when you go to address a proposal you can enter an email address or just part of the first or last name. Zapproved will search through all of your contacts and compile a drop-down list of names that match what you’ve typed.

It’s as easy as 1-2-3… well 4, actually.

1. Navigate to your contacts page here or from your Zapproved Message Center by clicking on Contacts in the submenu.
2. Select the big green “Get from Outlook” button. (If this is your first time uploading contacts you may need to click the yellow bar at the top of the browser to install ActiveX controls. Need help? Click here.)
3. Check the box next to the contacts you wish to upload to Zapproved.
4. Finalize the process by clicking “Upload Contacts.”

We are excited to offer this feature for your convienence, but most computers have safeguards in place to prevent viruses and other unwanted software to infiltrate your PC. These Active X controls are highly recommended, but they will add a couple of steps to this process. Don’t worry, this only takes a moment, is easy to do, and, most importantly, it will not affect the security of your PC in the least. You will only need to do this the first time you import contacts. If you need help, please click the More Info button under the “Get from Outlook” and “Upload Contacts” buttons.

Currently, we support importing contacts from Microsoft Outlook for Internet Explorer users. We plan to add this feature with other applications, such as Gmail and LinkedIn.

Where do you store most of your contacts? Let us know by commenting on this post, or send email to myidea@zapproved.com.

InfoWorld: Current Financial Crisis Fuels ‘Cloud Computing’

In today’s InfoWorld, Tom Sullivan wrote an interesting article entitled “Will the downturn accelerate cloud computing?” that provides a great snapshot of the state of cloud computing.  Sullivan touched base with many key industry analysts, SaaS vendors and enterprise customers to find out how the current state of affairs in the financial markets is impacting IT decisions. 

 

The general trend is that as IT budgets are tightening that the value and flexibility of cloud computing and software-as-a-service are being recognized.  John Girard, CEO of Clickability, is quoted as saying, “One of the great things about SaaS and cloud computing more generally is that they’re pay-as-you-go.” 

 

That’s really the key point.  It is going to get progressively harder to justify the capital expense of IT infrastructure and huge enterprise software deployments when a new and better model is taking root.

 

The SaaS/Cloud revolution won’t happen overnight, but it will happen. The harsh reality of a downturn is going to drive management to scrutinize expenditures.  Robert Iati of the TABB Group reiterates this point when he said that “enterprises are refocusing IT money as they concentrate more sharply on the particular value they offer.”

 

Just like the oil crisis of the ‘70s brought about a new generation of efficient automobiles, this financial crisis is going to motivate companies to get the most out of their capital.  The SaaS model will help enterprises, and even SMBs, maintain services to ride out the storm and be poised for growth once the economy regains its footing.