In February 2003, Kubi Software introduced the Kubi Client, an Outlook and Notes plug-in that brought team workspace capabilities to the two leading email clients in the enterprise market. The idea was to enable people to rapidly share more structured information--discussion threads, contact records, and documents--within an enhanced email folder. It was based on the idea that since people spent so much time in their email client, that an integration of team workspace functionality would seem like a natural thing to do. I published a very strong statement in support of Kubi, and so it came as a big surprise to me in early 2004 when it fired a third of its people, stopped shipping the product, and went very quiet. Well Kubi is back, with "Email Activity Management" as its new mantra.
Email Activity Management
Kubi's fundamental "new" idea is to enable users to take business critical messages out of the email client and use a structured collaboration approach to discover a resolution. The initial focus of this new idea is the sales process, with "Kubi Enable Sales" as the new product name.
Here's the idea. A sales executive is trying to close a deal. Normally they would send an email message to a group of internal people who can help with closing the deal through input and giving approval based on established business procedures. With the volume of messages that people get today, such an email could be easily overlooked.
When someone identifies a critical message, rather than continuing to address that issue via subsequent emails, they turn the email into a traceable Kubi activity by clicking on a button in their Outlook client. The email can be added to an existing activity, or a new one can be created. If it is a new activity, a new form from Kubi is opened, and the body of the message is brought across as the first history item, as well as any attachments. The Kubi form integrates with the organization's CRM system, to enable the new activity to be assigned to an existing customer opportunity. Action items of a specific type (eg, approvals) can be created and assigned to individuals, along with a due date.
Others invited to help resolve the activity an email message to indicate that they've been added to the activity, as well as a separate email to notify them of any outstanding action points to which they've been assigned. Each email message includes a link to the activity. When one of these users clicks to view the activity, they see a summary of what they've been asked to do. If their actions are governed by a compliance policy (determined by the type of action item that was assigned to them, and hence the background setup linking activity types to policies), that policy is displayed on a tab for their review. Information about the customer opportunity is automagically brought across from the enterprise CRM system. If the procedure says that other people should be kept in the loop, then Kubi will automatically alert them. The owner of the action item can approve it as is, approve it with modifications (such as a revision to an attached document), or reject it. Whatever happens, a running history is maintained in the "Activity Blog". When an action item is updated, the original owner is notified by email.
Initial Reaction
I plan on attending the Kubi Web seminar in the morning (albeit at 3am my time), but here's my initial reaction.
- An organization can build a business case to buy this. It is dealing with a real issue, and hence Kubi has identified a "compelling reason to buy". The return on investment will be easy to argue if the organization has suffered from misplaced critical business emails.
- This isn't an out-of-the-box solution, given that there will need to be customization of business process rules for each organization. Either Kubi has to rapidly build a go-to-market network of partners, or it will have to build its own consulting services team. Both take time. It may be hard to recruit partners because Kubi only offers a single product at this time.
- People's communication tools have expanded in recent years, with instant messaging being the most visible and widely used addition. It doesn't appear that Kubi supports this in any way.
- Once IBM more fully elaborates on its "Activity Explorer" ideas, there may be too much of an overlap with the Kubi idea for Kubi to have a valid market opportunity. It might get squashed.
- There will be skepticism in the market as to the longevity of Kubi, given that it has already had a market place failure. That will stand against them. I wonder if Kubi would have been better to come to market with a new company name? Alternatively, it needs to secure another round of high profile venture capital to demonstrate that someone new is willing to put money on the line.
- If this approach becomes an ingrained way of doing things within an organization, is it possible to create a new activity without first sending an email message? Why wouldn't the originator of the "business critical message" just create a new activity directly?
- There are no real-time (Pillar 3) capabilities for joint review and input into the activity, nor is presence displayed for people on the activity team. I advocate that both are important additions, but perhaps they can be adequately addressed by Microsoft rather than Kubi.
- And most critically, if email is so overloaded, won't people potentially miss the notification messages? Wouldn't it be better to integrate with an enterprise IM platform for pop-up alerts of critical things?
What Do You Think?
I'm interested in your take on Kubi Rev 2. Please leave a comment below, or email Michael.
Comments