[pedalpete]

I built a similar project last year, but abandoned it due to lack of business.

Just around the time I got my beta out, I discovered shiftplanning.com (they were in beta about a month before me) - I would say quality wise, my build was very similar to shiftplanning, much better than schedulefly.

The reason I ditched it was that after working with a number of local businesses, I found they always had excuses to not use it. They would say stuff like 'if you can show us our monthly labour costs, then we'll start using it'. But they weren't able to get monthly labour costs the way they used excel, so an online solution would have been better. Another request was holiday scheduling, which I did add, but still, no increase in usage. It was excuse after excuse, so I clearly think this is an area where people recognize a pain, but don't seem to care enough about it.

Along with that, my heart was not really in it (I was convinced to build it after mentioning to a friend that it was crazy how businesses were still scheduling with excel and paper, etc.etc.).

The problems aren't technical. There are LOTS of scheduling sites. I hadn't seen any of quality until I built mine, and then saw shiftplanning. Your site looks pretty good, but schedulers should be able to select a shift, rather than entering a time, as most businesses have standard shifts for their business, and then need the ability to just edit the time for specific cases, stuff like that.

In the end, I'm happy I didn't dedicate too much time to the project. Looking at the compete scores http://siteanalytics.compete.com/schedulefly.com+shiftplanni..., this just doesn't seem to be an area of interest to businesses.

ShiftPlanning is free, and they still can't get a large number of users. The problems are multiple.

1) You can likely only target small businesses or branches of a larger business. I spoke to a few chains, and they all said (surprisingly) that they don't dictate an online schedule service for their outlets.

2) It is an add-on service option for large operations like call-centers,etc which is already offered through their pbx or other systems. One business I spoke to had an add-on which came with their ERP system.

3) along with the groups I mentioned already, here's another 3 http://siteanalytics.compete.com/fendza.com+helloscheduling.... some of these guys have been at it a long time. I'll admit that I think most of these are poorly designed, but that can't be the only problem.

I don't expect you to read this comment and just give-up. That would be lame. But I do hope to open your eyes a bit, maybe you'll see another opportunity in a related space, or this comment will help you somehow.

If you have any questions, please feel free to ask.

[jseifer]

Thanks a lot for the thoughtful response. I do have some questions for you.

- How did you market it?

- You said you talked to local businesses and chains. What did you do to get to them? What was most effective?

- Are there any marketing avenues you think should be avoided?

- Are there any features which you found to be not worth it? I'm keeping it simple for now but would appreciate knowing where not to take it.

- What finally made you decide to abandon it? What did you do with your customers?

[pedalpete]

As I mentioned, I was in closed beta. I never did a full release, my marketing was limited to people I spoke with, people I know who own/manage businesses with scheduling needs.

The number of people I spoke to who said 'that's GREAT!!! I want that for my company' was probably 20. Of course, I had mentioned it to probably 100 people but most aren't in a position where they really care or do staff scheduling. About 5 people who manage staff said they had no interest, reasons they gave where that they don't like/trust/need computers to do it, or that there schedules were so simple it wasn't necessary.

I did an initial slow beta release to 5 companies, 3 tried the service. After three weeks 0 were making schedules. I spoke to them about the changes that needed to be made, what they would like to see, and got a bunch of feedback, but nothing really actionable, as I had mentioned (or nothing that would actually have made a difference I believe).

I then sent emails inviting other businesses to use the service. I can't remember the exact numbers or responses. It wasn't high. They looked, a few signed-up and said they'd get there supervisors to look at it. A few weeks later, again, nobody was using it to build their schedules. Another round of calls, coffees to discuss what was needed, etc. lots of responses like 'when this supervisor gets back we'll start using it', 'we're just changing this', 'we need time to do x', etc. etc. It took a bit of time on my part to realize these were just excuses to not use the service. If I'd filled the need, they'd have used it.

Of course, you could say 'well maybe your product sucked'. Fair enough. Maybe it did, but I'll tell you that it was a whole lot better than most of the stuff out there. As I'm sure you know, there are lots of scheduling sites that are almost impossible to make heads or tails of due to poor UI and design. I'm not a great designer and a friend did a bit of design for me, but I'm pretty good at UI, and this was pretty simple to use. It worked, just nobody cared.

Speaking to local businesses I found was easy, and in my research, I had spoken to a bunch of businesses about how they do their scheduling so I understood their needs before I started building. Then I figured it was just a matter of getting a product out there and tweaking it and adding features based on feedback.

I know a few people who work for large chains in IT or other management capacity, so that was my in with the chains.

I would say in the end I found all features not worth it ;) but I too started fairly slowly. I'm trying to remember all the features it had. It wasn't SUPER feature heavy. The feature list that I remember was

1) add employees

2) employee types (manager, scheduler, staff)

3) create template shifts (one click to add a shift to the schedule instead of selecting start/end-times each time.

4) add shift to schedule

5) add shift request

6) request time off

7) employee payroll accounting

8) calculate over-time

9) publish schedule/send-emails, etc. etc.

10) holiday planning (as requested by a business)

The decision to abandon it was mostly made for me. 0 for 25 is not a good record, particularly when you have a personal relationship with most of those businesses.

I actually made a little test to see what would happen. I made sure that no schedules had been made for the upcoming week, and I just shutdown the site.

I figured if people noticed and wanted to know what happened to the site and wanted the service, they would ask. Of course, I mean the people who had already seen it and new about it. Nobody asked, nobody knew it went away, nobody cared.

I contrast that with another site I shutdown late last year, and I still get emails from people asking me to bring it back, or what happened to it, thanking me for building it, etc. etc.

I know I'm quick to make decisions on these sorts of things, but as I mentioned before, my heart wasn't in it, and it seemed that customers weren't passionate and didn't feel the pain.

The decision to abandon ship was made when I considered the alternatives businesses had (including a free competitor in the space with a decent product), and the impact I felt my product could make.

I didn't do anything with my customers. I hadn't charged them (actually I didn't build a billing system as that would have been an extra charge up front that I wasn't willing to invest in until I had enough paying customers to make it profitable). The businesses are all still doing there schedules as they always had I assume.

I've worked for a few start-ups now both as a programmer and in other biz-dev, product management capacities, etc. etc. along with my own personal projects. There is a certain feeling I think you get when launching a product that has some traction, even if only minor. There is a buzz about it, and people get talking about it. So I guess in the end, a big part of my abandon decision was that this just didn't have that 'GO!' energy to it and I didn't have the rocketfuel for the project.

The great thing I take away from these sorts of projects is that there is no shortage of great things to be done, problems to be solved and opportunities.

[ultrasaurus]

I was considering building a scheduling program too, after seeing the paper-posted-on-the-breakroom-wall school of scheduling in action, but I gave up after talking to potential users and buyers who basically said they wouldn't buy it, and they wouldn't use it if it was free.

But I still believe that someday they will switch to something better, so good luck.

[rufugee]

I don't know. We pay ADP for similar software currently that is completely horrible from a user experience. However, they've got us because of the integration with the rest of our payroll and HR systems.

Jason's site looks extremely well-designed and user-friendly, but I'd wager a lot of companies will require some integration work to really see the benefit.

[rumblestrut]

How long did you work on business development? Could it be you didn't give it enough time to gain legs (not trying to be facetious).

[pedalpete]

Business development was an ongoing process during development for me. I spent about a month in planning, and talking to businesses about their scheduling needs. Then throughout the development process, I'd be talking to businesses and showing off bits and pieces, getting them ready, and getting early feedback.

In the end, this product had a VERY short run. I think it was available to be used for two months.

I personally don't think business development should be begging people to use your product. You should be able to introduce the product, get people interested, help them in getting it set-up, and fill that adoption need. Particularly when it is a task they already do regularly and you're providing a better method, not something completely new.

I also think that a project should be more like a baby deer than a baby human. Deer can walk right out of the womb. They may not walk well, but they stand on their own legs and just need help moving along and with direction etc. If you try to stand your baby up a few times, and just keeps falling, maybe the problem isn't that you haven't given it enough time, maybe you don't realize that it doesn't have legs!

Not being facetious, but I agree some projects need a longer customer adoption cycle, and it is entirely possible that things would have been different if I had given it 6 months or a year. But I would have had difficulty going to a business and selling them the product I had, knowing that there was a free alternative to them that was likely better or at least as good as my offering.

I add to that the fact that the free offering still has nearly 0 traction more than a year later, and I am very pleased with my decision.

If you're really passionate about scheduling and think that is your purpose in life to bring scheduling to the world, great. That isn't my goal. I built it as a business, and I can look back today and see that it doesn't appear anybody else has made a great business out of this market, I doubt I would have been any different.