The New BuDuRu Network Blog

Yes a blog dedicated to the BuDuRu Network, I should have done this years ago. Ok I had to, in my off technology life I am as low tech as it gets and am an (did I get that right?) avid backpacker and hiker and really wanted a place to post some stuff about some of my recent excursions; however, I realized I was feeling a bit awkward trying to post my backpacking posts among my BuDuRu posts. So welcome to the BuDuRu Network blog and please stay tuned as I have a few new posts coming up soon. -Stephen

Simple Solutions

This new generation of the BuDuRu Network is as Tom (one of our wonderful customers) puts it “Totally Cool”. The new Web2.0 interface is a cross between a Business Social Network, “the only one of its kind” and a Web or Virtual Desktop. The interface is compatible with all the major browsers and has complete support for Java Widgets. This means that in the future you will be able to develop and release your own applications on BuDuRu’s framework, then manage, maintain and release them to 1 or 100s of your customers globally all from one location and all from within the user friendly BuDuRu Desktop. Also with BuDuRu's ever exspanding list of web application programming interfaces (APIs), some functions can be tied directly into your existing business applications allowing you to simplify your users BuDuRu experience even more.

Up to this point, companies have designed their vendor and customer portals almost entirely for what we might call a “Power User”, i.e. people that are going to use it day in and day out. If you have ever trained a new hire on one of your customers portals, you may have noticed this. And your new co-worker is borderline amazed at your ability to navigate complexity with relative ease.

For a business process like catalog management where your vendor catalog sometimes almost never changes, 90% of the users don’t get the opportunity to make changes and therefore don’t use the catalog features day in and day out, this design focus leads to only about a 10% user adoption. Casual users don’t have the time or usage frequencies that foster retention of complex features.

This is why at BuDuRu we put a great deal of emphasis on casual users. In fact, BuDuRu’s design starts with the casual users, and then trickles up to power users.

Our goal has always been that when a customer logs into BuDuRu they are proud of their decision because everyone likes it. We want their co-workers to say, "Wow, this is really easy to use. Thanks for making my day better." We think this happens with BuDuRu because we care a great deal about all of the people using the software, not just the power users.

And this leads us to our one and only Design Philosophy.

Keep it simple.