So what have we been up to?

Before you all ask, let me go ahead and fill you in on everything...

We have been busy working on fixing a pre-launch "bug-fix" list of around 15 items... with any new freshly coded product it takes a ton of recession testing to verify that the site is using the code as designed and the product is working. There were very few bugs on the front end - aka "Shopper website"... so the look and feel works really well... Most, unfortunately, have been on the backend "vendor system"... where we and/or the vendor can update their profile pages, as well as upload/change coupons & banners... So Jessie has been burning some major midnight oil with the help of David and Anil to get everything updated/enhanced..

In the mean time, we were also selected out of many other companies by Microsoft to attend a week long summit on moving our product to their Azure platform... The Azure platform is Microsoft's cloud platform. What this meant for us was a team of Microsoft developers, a project manager and 5 straight days of education on their latest product - plus the power to take our site and move it to a new platform that would virtually guarantee unlimited processing, ram, database size, storage size and bandwidth.... not to mention greater redundancy... We completed the task in 2 days.

View the interview with Microsoft by David and Jessie - here - at the end of the event, we gave a presentation of our site/product to a panel of Judges and Venture Capitalists... see photo and we were awarded with a project completition aware - see photo to read more about this click here

On the sales front, we have a partnership with a telemarketing firm, and we have been working practically non-stop with them to sharpen the scripts, presentations, and other sales generating tools that we will be using to sell the services of ChasingSavings.com

So as you can see we have been extremely busy on several fronts. Not to mention that we are working on several potential partnerships that could enable other companies to offer our site along wtih their services.

quick post

Just found this great article... thought I would pass it on to you...

If shoppers have money, downturn is a boon There has never been a better time to be a consumer. America is on sale. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33127705/ns/business-personal_finance/from/ET

Chasing Savings - New Account Presentation

Check out the ChasingSavings.Com - New Accounts Presentation:

Chasing Savings - New Account Presentation

View more presentations from Net-Flow Solutions.

It's been non-stop 18 hour days!!! But we have a live site!!!

GREAT NEWS!!! After 6 straight days of 18 hours, we have a live site... Now we will spend a few days making sure all the feature functions work before we load client advertisements to the site...

Some thanks that need to go out...

Microsoft - Thanks for putting together the BizSpark program... Also - Windows 7 is the best OS since XP... :)

David - Dude, you rocked getting the site live... this guy put in the long hours with Microsoft, the hosting companies - in the middle of deploying the site we had to switch hosting providers due to limitations in administrative rolls on the dedicated servers.

Jessie - Simply an amazing job on everything you have done, from documentation, to project management, to working on marketing material... BTW - thanks for buying David and me lunch today :)~

Jim - Great work today in leading the talk with the potential client... I am feeling extremely confident in our sales team...

Anil -Thank you for all of your efforts in leading the development team... Being a week behind and catching up over a weekend was amazing work.

Development team - The site looks very good, thank you guys...

Our sales team - Go Get Them!!! - Beth, Brian, Erin, Kevin, Jenna, Jerry, Kathy, Kurt, and Michael... All of you are out there trying to make this company a success, I know that you can...
I love the team effort I am seeing, and the creativeness that is starting to flow...

I also guess I need to catch all of you up to date on our progress... so much has been going on, that I had to decide if it was worth getting 20 extra minutes a day of sleep or to post... at 4-5 hours a night of sleep on average, sorry the sleep won out...

As you can see, our sales force has grown... we are now focusing on local, regional, and national accounts, so if your a small, medium, or large business representative, expect a call from someone from Chasing Savings!!!

As mentioned above, two weeks ago Thursday, Jessie determined that we were running about a week behind the project plan - which on our rushed schedule meant that we were actually about a month to two behind... Anil and the development team added more resources and over a weekend basically caught back up for the deliverable time... Very Good Job!!! Anil, you have proven that 1) Jessie was right in recommending you, and 2) you have proven to be an asset to Chasing Savings

Anyway - It is time I get reacquainted with my wife and daughter... everyone have a great weekend... and Keep Saving!!! - Mike Holland - CEO of Chasingsavings.com