[MARKETING] OFBiz Marketing Roadmap and Strategy

[Sharan-F]

Hi All

A while ago I created a Draft Marketing and Communications Roadmap on the wiki

https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/OFBIZ/Draft+Marketing+and+Communication+Roadmap

The main tasks identified at the time were as follows:

1. Manage OFBiz Product branding and brand re-alignment
2. Develop strategy to encourage more business users
3. Review and Update OFBiz website (technical and business focus)
4. Setup an online Demo tailored for business users
5. Develop a set of common generic marketing material (integrator independent)
6. Events and Conferences

We have already done some work on regarding the branding and brand re-alignment, events (Apachecon) and also social media (Twitter, Blogging) but I'd really like to get things moving in other areas too so will be happy to get feedback (and hopefully participation) particularly from this mailing list on these topics.

We will also be looking for people to help with general project and community marketing activities as follows:

- Authors - to write marketing content
- Proofreaders / Editors - to review drafts and improve them
- Graphic Artists / Designers - to design graphics and layout
- Website Designers - to help re-design OFBiz website
- Translators - to take documents and translate them into other languages
- Wikipedia Authors - to create, review and update wikipedia related content
- Social Media - to help promote and create awareness on social media
- Speakers - to present or deliver OFBiz related talks at conferences or Open Source events

so if you'd like to volunteer for any of the roles, please add your name to the table on the wiki page.

One of the areas I'd really like to start with is a review and potential re-design of our main website so I will be starting a range of discussion threads so please watch out for them).

Thanks
Sharan

[JulienNicolas]

Hi Sharan, all,

It's a good initiative !

As you know we start an effort in the same way for French community
(ofbiz-fr.org). We are using OFBiz cms engine for our website.
Its goal is the same, OFBiz promotion and provide documentation for new
and advanced user.
The other thing that I think is important is promotion of non-official
projects that could be used in OFBiz. For that we are working on a
library that list those projects. We'll provide project description,
documentation and a link to the repository. It is still not online but
design are already done.
List : http://www.nomaka.fr/ofbiz/liste.html
Item description : http://www.nomaka.fr/ofbiz/index.html

It could be interesting to have this kind of thing to help external
initiatives to be more visible.

Another point is what are axis you want to promote ? ERP, e-commerce or
automation of enterprise processes framework ?
OFBiz start to promote ERP & e-Commerce but we are now convinced that
the automation of enterprise processes framework is more pertinent.

I'm curious to know the opinion of the community :)

Julien.


Le 21/05/2015 18:25, Sharan-F a écrit :

> Hi All
>
> A while ago I created a Draft Marketing and Communications Roadmap on the
> wiki
>
> https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/OFBIZ/Draft+Marketing+and+Communication+Roadmap
> <https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/OFBIZ/Draft+Marketing+and+Communication+Roadmap>
>
> The main tasks identified at the time were as follows:
>
> 1. Manage OFBiz Product branding and brand re-alignment
> 2. Develop strategy to encourage more business users
> 3. Review and Update OFBiz website (technical and business focus)
> 4. Setup an online Demo tailored for business users
> 5. Develop a set of common generic marketing material (integrator
> independent)
> 6. Events and Conferences
>
> We have already done some work on regarding the branding and brand
> re-alignment, events (Apachecon) and also social media (Twitter, Blogging)
> but I'd really like to get things moving in other areas too so will be happy
> to get feedback (and hopefully participation) particularly from this mailing
> list on these topics.
>
> We will also be looking for people to help with general project and
> community marketing activities as follows:
>
> - Authors - to write marketing content
> - Proofreaders / Editors - to review drafts and improve them
> - Graphic Artists / Designers - to design graphics and layout
> - Website Designers - to help re-design OFBiz website
> - Translators - to take documents and translate them into other languages
> - Wikipedia Authors - to create, review and update wikipedia related content
> - Social Media - to help promote and create awareness on social media
> - Speakers - to present or deliver OFBiz related talks at conferences or
> Open Source events
>
> so if you'd like to volunteer for any of the roles, please add your name to
> the table on the wiki page.
>
> One of the areas I'd really like to start with is a review and potential
> re-design of our main website so I will be starting a range of discussion
> threads so please watch out for them).
>
> Thanks
> Sharan
>
>
>
> --
> View this message in context: http://ofbiz.135035.n4.nabble.com/MARKETING-OFBiz-Marketing-Roadmap-and-Strategy-tp4668867.html
> Sent from the OFBiz - User mailing list archive at Nabble.com.

[Sharan-F]

Hi Julien

Thanks for the links. I like what have you have done especially the indication of what is compatible with which OFBiz versions.

Which area of OFBiz to promote?
Well I know there are discussions currently in progress about what to do and whether we could split off the ERP part from the framework.

Until a final decision and consensus is found then we need to continue as if the OFBiz product will remain the same as it is now. (so an ERP in some cases in need of customisation and the application development framework).

To me this means that we will probably need to look at marketing to two distinct groups

1) Developers who want to customise the ERP or use the framework
2) Business Users who could use the ERP either out of the box (as they may only want a particular module) or think that OFBiz could be easily adapted to meet their needs.

If we are to focus on these two groups then we can see that different marketing approaches will be needed.

The developers would need to understand the benefits of the framework, how it works and how to develop in it. I think this information is pretty much included as part of the Technical documentation.  I'm not sure how much they use the OFBiz demo as it is although the Example application is important.

The business users would also need to understand the benefits of using OFBiz and why it might be easier to implement. They want details of what features it includes and what business processes it supports. With it being free and open source we may need to show project maturity and ongoing development, good references and experienced implementors. Their first look at OFBiz is extremely important so what they see and how it looks and feels is key to keeping them interested – so this is why I think the OFBiz demo could be more targeted towards them.  (We currently have links to 2 OFBiz demos on the main website page now so the idea of having 2 demos one targeted for developers and the other for business users might be worth considering....)

We have several products that are built on OFBiz and yes I think that we could also give them some marketing space because promoting them is also promoting OFBiz. I have some ideas for some potential improvements for the Service Providers page and also a page promoting OFBiz related products so will be highlighting those on this list under the 'Marketing' threads

Thanks
Sharan

[Jacques Le Roux]

Le 24/05/2015 20:04, Sharan-F a écrit :
> We have several products that are built on OFBiz and yes I think that we
> could also give them some marketing space because promoting them is also
> promoting OFBiz. I have some ideas for some potential improvements for the
> Service Providers page and also a page promoting OFBiz related products so
> will be highlighting those on this list under the 'Marketing' threads
>
> Thanks
> Sharan
Our better example is Jira, though it uses only the Entity Engine

Jacques