Front Office Box

Invitations to use our service free of charge

Our Ambassadors are entitled to use our service free of charge, forever. Any small business interested in helping build our community will qualify for an Ambassador account.

We’re also offering free accounts to Start Ups, because we know how hard it is, and Not For Profit organizations, because we want to help

All we ask is you use the software in a business context, and help us understand how we can do a better job, for you and others like you.

So there’s no downside. Register, tell us a little about your business and stay in touch. We’ll keep improving the software and services, while you get on with the day job.

If you’re interested in all the why’s and how’s about us and our software, keep reading. Otherwise just use the software and find out what a great job we’ve done in providing business software without the complexity and technology getting in your way.

Steve Reeves

CEO

Widespread Solutions LLC

d/b/a Front Office Box

Vodpod and Vimeo do a great job of hosting/publishing video the videos you’ll find on our blog pages but unfortunately the quality isn’t as good as we’d like, so we’ve also hosted flash versions of much higher quality which you can find at:

Find our Tutorial video library here

Our software is new, different and designed specially for smaller consulting and business services organizations.

We focus on the aspects of business other software ignores, providing:

• Client profiles - companies, people, networks, tasks, correspondence, notes and documents. Everything you know about the client on one page.
• Plans - who will do what, and when, including tasks, correspondence, notes and documents, and collaboration with partners.
• Schedules- what needs to be done, when, by whom - today, this week, this month, next month.
• Responses - RFQ’s, surveys, questionnaires - all the answers collected and stored in web forms.
• Knowledgebase - public wiki for managing and sharing content, exchanging ideas and collaboration.
• Forum - discussions site for networking, sharing and promoting your business.

Bringing all this information together so users can get, and share, a single view of their operation isn’t simple, but we’ve taken the complexity out of the solution, so you can get on with managing your business instead of fighting your systems.

We host the application on secure servers. It’s available anywhere there’s an internet connection - all you need is a browser on any PC, laptop or other mobile device.

We look after your data, but you can export it - anytime you want

That’s the headlines. There’s plenty more detail, below.

Not just software - a Community of like minded people.

The design and functionality of Front Office Box is a joint effort. Users decide what it should do. Designers and programmers make it work.

The Leadership Council comprises owner managers across half the globe, from Helsinki, Finland to Portland, Oregon. Members get to join in the discussion of what gets built and their recommendations are given precedence over the product people. Support requests are translated into development plans - little things get done immediately but major changes are subjected to a detailed review by users, designers and programmers.

Ambassador users promote the service to the people they do business with. They get to use the service free of charge because they help to build the community. They also get to invite others to Ambassador status. Ambassador members are invited to join the leadership council and will be offered options when Front Office Box stock is issued to the public.

Ultimately, the community is about mutual support with members adding value to each other - sharing what and who they know, collaborating in customer focused supply chains, and consolidating demand to get better deals from service providers.

Designed for small business
The most important, and perhaps least obvious, difference is our recognition of small business needs. Large organizations mostly follow the “command and control” philosophy. Individuals are assigned roles within functions. What they do, and how they do it, is dictated by the management structure and the need to report “up the line”. Corporate software is built to reflect this separation of work into small packages, with work-flow passing one to the next and reporting to management. Individuals spend a large portion of their time on administration - the ubiquitous paperwork. In smaller businesses everybody does everything. Lines between roles are less defined, and individuals taken on multiple roles. They spend more of their time on operations and administration gets done in the spare time. Typical business software is built to suit the ways big businesses work. Front Office Box is built to suit the ways smaller businesses work.

Designed by users
In the past software has been constrained by the limitations of technology. What users wanted was always less important than what programmers could achieve with the tools available. Sub-optimal support for user needs, burgeoning control by IT Departments and failing software projects have all been natural outcomes. Front Office Box is built with new technology - Ruby on Rails - incorporating tools to help the programmer deliver more flexibility to the users. Our users we’re able to dictate the way the software worked, and the programmers delivered it. Throughout the design/develop process, it was the users taking the decisions on what should be where, and how.

Designed to Manage
Small business owners understand the need to plan what they want to do, execute the plan, and check the results. They probably don’t have information stored in ways which help them do it. Front Office Box has the Plan > Action > Review process built in. The user doesn’t need to think about it because best practice is embedded in the work-flow. Future releases will extend this subliminal best practice to include specific features for sales and customer service management.

Designed for the Future
The Web 2.0 revolution brings thousands of new software tools within reach for smaller businesses. Choosing which ones, to do what, can be difficult for people with a day job. Front Office Box harnesses the capabilities of the internet as they emerge, simplifies the complexities and consolidates these in business solutions for people who are busy delivering to customers.

Designed to Always Be There
The internet makes business information more secure, accessible, and useful at lower cost. Front Office Box is hosted on secure servers guaranteeing 99.9% uptime. The application can be used 24X365, reached through any internet browser and from desktop, laptop and mobile devices. The underlying database is a single application. New releases of software, once tested, are deployed in a few minutes, direct to the server. Users can export data at any time.

Designed for Getting Started
The demonstration system shows Front Office Box in use for sales, customer service, projects, and even simple ToDo lists. The Getting Started wizard helps new users set up meaningful data in minutes. Address Book and Contact data can be imported with our templates and tools. The Knowledgebase includes help information with FAQs and Support Forum. There are no training courses or user manuals, nobody needs them. We’ve netted down the business process to make it as generic as possible. Whether the opportunity is a major sale or organizing a party, Front Office Box works the same way. Anybody who can do it on paper can do it with Front Office Box, but much better.

Designed as a Business Solution
The Front Office Box “software as a service” is provided by Widespread Solutions Llc, incorporated in Illinois, U.S.A. Free of charge user accounts are available through invitations by Front Office Box or any of its Ambassador users. A premium support package is available, for a monthly fee. Support, terms and conditions and privacy policy are all described in Knowledgebase. The start up version is provided free of charge, and team and office editions are affordable for even the smallest businesses.