|
|
|
Razing Towers of Software Babel
|
Business New Haven
10/9/1995
By: Kevin Wheeler
|
Joe Pannone knows about 50 languages (not including Italian, but certainly including BASIC and COBALT). Not a bad repertoire for a software developer and entrepreneur whose motto is: “If you can explain it in English, I can write it in computer language.”
Languages are the underpinnings of Pannone's software development company, Forza Software Solutions. Forza tailors and designs software programs to suit companies' special needs when on-the-shelf software doesn't exist. Pannone, the computer jock who founded Forza, is invited into a company, learns how it runs and then holds a strategy get-together, known as a Joint Application Development (JAD) session, to design or customize software to streamline the business.
IBM started the JAD concept and has a division to customize software for customers. Microsoft decided to stick to software instead of providing in-house solution services and to certify smaller firms and consultants as solutions-providers. Forza charges customers by the hour rather than a flat rate; what cost a customer $10,000 for Forza to create would have cost more than $100,000 for IBM to develop, claims Pannone.
For Insurance OnLine in Hamden, Forza developed AMPS (automated mail processing system) software to pulls information automatically from a questionnaire Internet and Prodigy browsers fill in to get free quotes on its insurance premiums. AMPS sorts the information by ZIP code and faxes it to company agents in that area of the country. Forza added a fairness factor to distribute prospects equally to the company's 200 agents: If ten prospects come from the same area and the company has five agents, AMPS will distribute two prospects to each of the five agents. Without AMPS, the company would have had to hire ten employees working 12-hours shifts every day. With AMPS, the company needs just one full-time employee and has saved approximately $1 million a year in labor.
Take the felt roofing distributor in Thomaston in need of a system to track its quotes and maintain client profiles. The company's four salespeople make an average of 25 quotes daily; Forza had a JAD session with the company and, based on its needs, created QQ (quick quoter).
Pannone wrote a similar program for a Wallingford international cable company; it not only handles quotes, it automatically converts currency exchanges.
A New York hair salon approached Forza to develop software for appointments, inventory, sales, payroll and distributor information. Because no such software existed, Pannone says, and there are 250,000 U.S. salons, Forza agreed to design the software if it could keep the rights to it. The salon didn't split hairs over the details, and the second version of this cutting-edge software, Scissors, is now available. “Less than 25 copies are out there,” says Pannone.
Forza's main source of revenue is software development, not marketing wares it designs. But Pannone says he can customize software for any industry, which makes targets harder to pinpoint than for strictly niche products.
Ninety percent of Forza's revenue comes from Microsoft referrals. Six months after Forza started, Pannone became a designated Microsoft Solution Provider after acing an exam testing his knowledge of Microsoft products. If a customer contacts Microsoft for training or special product features, Microsoft refers them to a provider. For example, Microsoft's Excel spread sheet program may not meet a customer's every need, so Microsoft refers the customer to Forza, and Forza soups it up or creates something new out of Microsoft's development tools.
Providers also test new software. Forza has had Windows 95 since December 1993, one of the first 5,000 users to have it.
Now that it's on the market, for those who need help changing over, Microsoft has ordained Forza a Windows '95 Migration Specialist. A Windows fan, Pannone can't wait to help customers adapt. He won't have to wait long: Microsoft faxed him a list of eager converts in Southern Massachusetts and Connecticut within days of the software's release.
Although it's a provider, Forza is not obligated to use or promote only Microsoft products, even though it does. Pannone considers Microsoft's products to have the best developmental tools for creating programs, like Scissors and AMPS, from the ground up. And he will stick with them “until another company comes up with a better product.”
For his newest venture, IIMS (Innovative Internet Marketing Solutions), Pannone is branching into Internet services creating home page “billboards” in cyberspace for clients - “keeping both 'I's' on [their] future.”
|
Go FirstGo PreviousGo
NextGo LastGo
to Index
|
|
