Change of tack

Does anyone enjoy 'cold calling'? I don't! It's not that I don't enjoy meeting and speaking to new acquaintances because I do, what challenges me is the etiquette around the interaction. I for one do not enjoy being cold called so why should I impose myself on others? I'm also of the mind set that if I have a need to be fulfilled, I'm more than capable of identifying someone to call if I need help. 

In addition to the etiquette of cold calling, I'm also mindful of the terrible reputation attributed to companies who cold call. How many PPI calls have you answered in recent months, I've personally lost count. I don't want ProGenitor to be tarnished by association. 

Yet I see the value and benefit in cold calling. There can be no better way of getting a message to an intended recipient when you are in the process of developing a business. Yesterday for example I was 'cold called' by a company who had recently taken over the client list from the company who service my vacuum cleaner. It was more of an introduction to explain what had happened, the guy who ran the old franchise had retired, here's our new number, this is where we are if you need us. All very pleasant and I have to say useful as it has now saved me the effort of trying to find a new service agent. They also told me about their latest promotion but did not press the sale when I declined. 

On reflection, I think this is the key. Rather than look on cold calling as a direct and immediate sell, I'd be better to regard the event as a means of creating awareness in the company. By offering prospective customers benefit in working with ProGenitor, I can then accept that the call may (or may not) result in revenue in the longer term rather than an instant result. It also makes any knock-back more palatable, because there was never any immediate business riding on the exchange, there is no failure. I'll dust of my contacts list and get to work.

Darren Gent

Still Not Getting the Message Right

Saturday Morning and time to reflect on another busy week of highs and lows. Had a couple of really constructive meetings, the first with my local Primary School looking to move to Academy status and the second with representatives of Coventry City Council.

Its great when you get the 'No brainer' comment unprompted, "Why wouldn't people buy your product, I can see that any cost is more than off-set by the potential savings in time". I've just got to send out the quotations now so hopefully we can move forward.

We have also completed the foundation elements to our social media strategy. All the analytics and back links seem to be working. We can take registrations of people visiting our sites and looking to progress there interest through our web-pages. The web-pages nownow have lots of nice content, videos and case studies for people to look at, read and hopefully gain a thorough understanding of what we do. 

We are also going to use our Demonstration Area to host a series of installation guides as we look to implement a 'sole-trader' self extract, click and go version of ProAct. The mechanics of the self extract will be in place by the end of the Month, we just need to finish off how to take payment and tidy up a few little things around licencing before we go live. This will give me lots to tweet about.

We've also just completed build 1.0.8 of ProAct which we are just putting through final testing. Picking up on user feedback, We have added extra buttons so you can quickly bring up month and year to view history of communication events in the details zone. We have also made the tool 2.5x faster in use so recovering records now almost instant. And we have the ability for remote users to access the database through a web-browser to post and edit data. Great for collecting Pupil Data from Parents or for registering on events.

So this is all good.
However, around the social media, I'm still struggling to get our message right and I think this is where I need to focus my efforts now that we have the means to share the message and track and analyse the results. I know mechanically the process works. Any tweet or mail-shot I issue does generate traffic back to the site so in respect of the AIDA principal, I can create Awareness. What I've got to do is resolve how we convert awareness into Interest, Desire and Action. At this time, I'm simply not creating the desire and urgency in our prospective customers minds.

So, if you have time to comment, please have a look at the new web-pages at www.progenitorsolutions.com, or the LinkeIn site Here and let me have your thoughts. There always appreciated and as you know, do get acted upon

Darren Gent

Rollercoaster

If I was to equate my overarching experience of business ownership, specifically running a start up, to any other of life's experiences it must be that of riding a large and very fast rollercoaster.

It is a constant thrill but the ups are very up and the downs very down. It seems to me that if your in that safe little bit in the middle your doing nothing. 

The analogy continues in that like a rollercoaster, there is so much of the experience that you can not control. Once you've paid your money, strapped yourself in and set off you are completely at the mercy of the ride for the next moments. Sure that ride will end and you can choose whether or not to get back on or find another ride to go on but for the duration of that particular cycle you are committed, good or bad.

I told you in the last blog that we had a couple of important meetings lined up. The first was really hard work. We presented ProAct and particularly the features around allowing parents to populate pupil data (medical authority, photography approval, trip approvals, principle and secondary contact numbers etc etc ) directly to the database via secure log-on through a web-browser. We know this is a real and consistent issue having spoken to lots of Schools up and down the country. We demonstrated how the changes were made, from the parents and schools perspective and we demonstrated how through a simple report, the changes could be applied back into Capita's SIMS product. "Are you a Capita Technical Partner"; "No" and the shutters came down.

For the second meeting where we talked about how the product could be used to work with local businesses to capture and match requirements around real estate and waste, exactly the same process in effect, two remote parties sharing and maintaining common data, we were pushing at an open door.

Perhaps we got our message wrong in the first meeting, we are certainly looking at the integration with Capita and have already got a quote for what the licencing will cost us. The irony is that we probably already know what the API looks like as we can already generate the CTF file structures from the products. The missing link is therefore Capita authority to let us write the file content directly into the SIMS database rather than upload through a report. One button press to replace two?

BUT, if this is what we need to do to get us back on the rollercoaster for the next ride, we may as well buy the ticket and hold on.

Darren Gent

Goodbye #UoNFishbowl. Hello #RippleRound

I've just posted my final blog to the University of Nottingham Fishbowl site and so the project closes. It's been a great principally learning experience that I would have no reservations doing again as it has driven change in to our business.

I (we) knew that Sales and Marketing people were different but by my own admission never really appreciated their value. And it's not specifically about the Sizzle (the emotion) nor is it specifically about the Sausage (the product), it's about creating the bridge between the company and your customer. Creating a pathway that the customer is prepared to follow because they know there is benefit at the end of it.

Tomorrow, Colin and I have two important meetings in the diary that will test what we have learnt. I'll let you know how it goes.

What the experience has taught us is the value of a holistic digital presence as an integral part of our marketing strategy. This week will be the last time we twitter chat around the #UoNFishbowl tag but such is the value of the weekly discussion, the fishbowl alumni have decided to congregate around a new #RippleRound tag.

Please follow me on twitter @ProGenitorMan for any updates.    Darren Gent

I don't know what I don't know

It's been an interesting and busy week.

Monday started by putting together a slide-show designed to take users through the install of the ProAct client. This was triggered by a request from one of our reference sites who had recently updated their office hardware. I suspect it took much longer to write up the presentation than it did for them to actually do the install and set up but at least we have another useful document in our library for other such eventualities.

Tuesday was spent talking with representatives of the Council investigating how our products can support complimentary projects they are working on. Early days but lots of positive points to move forward with.

Wednesday was really good. Nelsons Solicitors hosted a Education Conference drawing in a number of delegates from local schools with or looking to move to Academy status. It is not till someone lays out the many issues in front of you that you realise, to coin a phrase, you actually don't know what you don't know. 

When Michael Gove announced recently that 

"Improving education is central to our reform agenda and we are committed to giving governors, headteachers and teachers more control over how they run their schools. We know they are best placed to decide how to give their pupils the best possible education and that is why we are encouraging more schools to become academies.

Many more schools will now be able to become academies and I am pleased they will be able to enjoy the additional freedoms, responsibility and empowerment that comes with academy status..

I suspect the use of the word 'enjoy' may not have been the most appropriate verb to use judging by the frowns on the faces of the delegates in the room. Still no pain no gain and if we can step in and help reduce some of the burden through our software, let us move forward together. It also helps that many of the new responsibilities have been engrained in commercial practice. Audit and accountability, Business Continuity Management, Data Protection and Freedom of Information etc etc all of which have been an integral part of our working life for many years.

Thursday was another useful learning opportunity. I joined in the #UKedchat twitter  hat in the evening discussing tips on supporting disengaged children. It was really nice to see how the teaching staff were embracing digital media to motivate children. Phone calls, e-mails and SMS messages home to parents to highlight exceptional performance seemed a nice, quick and personal touch that appears to return a really positive response from parents and pupils a like. It's a suggestion we are going to take to and try at our school reference site seeing as they have the facility at their fingertips and the benefit of being able to track and record such events against the child.

Hello Again!

It has been a long while since I posted my last blog. There's lots of reasons for this. The principal reason being my lack of knowledge around social media and more specifically blogging. It has taken a long time to craft the social media structure for the company as well as develop the content and branding.

During the intervening period, we have been working with the University of Nottingham. We are one of the fish in the in a fishbowl project. This is a soap opera for small businesses such as ours. Fundamentally we share our experience as we develop the business and experts comment and provide guidance. It's really pushing the use of social media as a business collaboration tool, which has certainly helped focus our social media strategy. Hence today's update.

The guidance from the experts has also helped shape our business and marketing strategy and we are now very focused on developing our core business in the education sector.

Rather than fill in the gaps here, visit the in a fishbowl portal and have a read.

The plan now, now that I've got my act together is to post an update here at least once a week.

You can also follow us on twitter using @ProGenitorMan the hashtag #UoNFishbowl.

Our web-site address is www.progenitorsolutions.com. We also have a Linkedin site, It would be great if you could follow us. 

Darren Gent

The ProGenitor Solutions Team

Having introduced myself and ProGenitor Solutions in my last posting, it’s probably a good idea to introduce the team. 


I like to think we run a social republic at ProGenitor Solutions so the organisational roles I will talk about reflect the allocation of skills rather than any rigid hierarchical structure. This division of skills also reflects the entrepreneurial nature of the business. That said, I’ll start at the top, nominally of course.


Colin is our Managing Director. Within the role he sets the strategic direction for the company and supports the commercial activities with me. Colin brings a wealth of senior management, project and programme experience to the company. He is also our product testing champion. Colin is also the driving force behind our education related activities being the chair of his local primary schools governors. He is adamant that the effective use of ICT in schools particularly to address the many administrative challenges can benefit the delivery of learning and improve results.


Jim is our Technology Director. Jim has the unenviable task of translating our brilliant ideas into a requirement specification that actually makes sense to our development team. He also takes care of our system architecture, hardware and software integration. Jim is also our principle telecommunication consultant with expert knowledge in Optical Networking so is well placed to support our interest in Superfast Broadband and FTTx. 


Mike is our Development Director. Mike is that rare bread of computer geek in that he actually thinks about the user and the functional purpose of what we ask him to develop before writing the code. As we run our developments using Agile methodologies, Mikes feedback is invaluable and is a key facilitator to how we are able to work and provide the effective and user friendly products we do. 


Tony is our Operations Director. Drawing upon his extensive field experience as both an installation and commissioning engineer enhanced by his Network Design knowledge, Tony ensures that the products we provide can be supported in the field and that they are scalable and secure. Tony is also Cisco accredited so he knows all about LANs and WANs, Routers, Firewalls and all that paraphernalia that non of us worry about until it breaks. 


Sally is our Financial Director. I would say that the most important role Sally performs is paying me each month but I’m sure Sally will disagree. Sally’s history is around programmes and project management for ICT, particularly change management so she provides some great checks and balances to our activities using this experience. There is definitely no pulling the wool over Sals eyes come project review time. 


Luke is the company secretary ensuring that we are aligned to our legal obligations, making sure that we report on time to companies house and the HMRC. 


Finally it’s me, Darren Gent. I am the Business Development director which basically translates as picking up all the pieces not covered elsewhere. I’m a time served Draughtsman from back in the day when graphite and ink were the fashion so I like to pick up all the multi-media bits. I’m also a PRINCE 2 practitioner so with Sally and Colin I pick up some of the programme and project work. I also performed a product marketing role in my previous life so I get given the commercial activities to progress. 


I hope that if you have read this far you will have an appreciation of our commercial experience working in blue chip ICT organisation and our core competence in Software development, Optical Network Design, Business Process Improvement and Programme and Project Management. 


Please contact me if you would like to take advantage of our services. Details are on our website