The Attivo Blog

As I sat down to write the topic for the blog this week I took a look at my subject, “QuickBooks and its relationship to MAX.”  I started to think of some ideas to write about and how I could make this blog interesting.  After I started reviewing the products the first thing I thought of was what a great partnership these two applications make. Along with QuickBooks and MAX I wanted to take a look at a few great partnerships in American Culture and see what kind of similarities these pairings have with these two products.  Batman has Robin, Luke Skywalker has Han Solo and The Green Hornet teams up with Kato.  Now one might ask what these super hero teams have in common with QuickBooks and MAX?  Well, all of these pairings fight daily challenges and enemies and all work together to solve these problems. Let’s take Batman and Robin.  These two superheroes commonly fight many villains but none more dangerous than the Joker.  The two must work together to bring him to justice.  Similarly, MAX works hand in hand with QuickBooks to give small to mid-sized discrete manufacturers the user friendly ERP functionality needed to effectively grow their business. Luke Skywalker and Han Solo have shown us the teamwork that is needed to defeat Darth Vader and the evil Intergalactic Empire.  QuickBooks and MAX also show us the teamwork to manage material and labor through the manufacturing process, helping manufacturers control inventory, plan material purchases and seamlessly maintain their accounts and journals. Last but not least we have the Green Hornet and Kato.  They must work as a single unit if they hope to defeat the mastermind called “Mr. Big.”  QuickBooks and MAX must also work as a single unit if they can hope to meet the customer’s demands.  This is done by allowing you to plan for expected orders and preventing you from being caught short of materials or time when orders come in. At the end of day, QuickBooks and MAX may not be known as superheroes to the general public, but to small, mid-sized manufactures that word may me more appropriate than one could realize.

I was asked to write a blog on a job shop application called JobBoss.  Feeling up to the task I visited search engines like Google and visited websites like Wikipedia to study up on the product and job shops in general.  After a couple of hours I felt I had gathered enough info and completed the initial draft.  I have to admit that I was fairly pleased with my first attempt.  I didn’t think it was award winning of course but not bad for my first blog ever written.  Needing a second opinion I walked into my co-workers office and asked if she would read it.  She smiled and asked me to read it to her out loud.  Feeling like I was back in my 5th grade English class I began telling her all of the amazing information I had gathered, like how JobBoss is the industry leading shop management system for job shops, contract and make to order manufactures.  I explained that over 4,000 shops worldwide use JobBoss to manage their custom make to order manufacturing needs.  I even threw out a couple of definitions of the word “job shop.”  She stopped me half way through and in the nicest way possible said she would rather watch paint dry then to listen to one more sentence.  Unfazed, I countered with the fact that JobBoss fully integrates with QuickBooks!  She didn’t seem as excited about that fact as I was. My confidence bruised I left her office and took my motley little blog into a meeting I had with a marketing “guru” who is helping me along with my first few months here at the Attivo Group.  I meekly asked him for feedback on my writing and hoped that JobBoss’s seamless quoting, order entry, shop floor control, and real time data collection would be enough to peak his interest.  Five seconds in he handed me back the sheet of paper and said that in his 20 years of marketing this was possibly the worst blog he had ever seen written.  He also told me not to be too offended because he is very blunt.  Well in that case, no offense taken I thought! I realized that instead of facts and information sharing a personal story I had with JobBoss might be the more interesting way to go. Several years back I attended Exact Software’s user “Engage” conference and there are only a few things that I still remember well.  One of the things that stood out was the passion/excitement of the JobBoss employees and the happiness of their customers.  I quickly learned the reason for this.  Businesses that manufacture unique, custom made parts are very excited to have an application that can streamline every function in the shop from developing quotes for new jobs to sending invoices for completed work.  I realized these people must be this happy because either JobBoss works and handles all of their custom, make to order needs or they just think the name JobBoss is as cool as I do!