Shed Suite Vision Update-and some reflection
Greetings from s̵u̵n̵n̵y̵ rainy Sarasota :),
It’s usually sunny, but lately we’ve been soaking wet watching the tropical storms float by.
I truly hope you are doing well, and your families and businesses are staying healthy.
It sure has been a crazy ride this year. We are all trying to make sense of what is happening around us, and to be honest sometimes it just feels overwhelming. It’s times like these that I am sure thankful for my faith in the Creator of the universe and his perfect plan for His children.
This month is a particularly special month for us here at Shed Suite. In September 2017 our first shed company created the first customer order in Shed Suite! In some ways it seems SO long ago, but in others it seems just last year.
We have come a long way since then, and are so grateful to be serving 34 Shed Companies and 12 RTO companies. Over the last 3 years we have learned so much about ourselves and what makes our team really special. We have also learned quite a lot about how to build great business software. We have made our share of mistakes along the way, but we would not trade any of them for anything. Making mistakes means we’re trying new things. Makes me think of this quote from Thomas Edison.
“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”
Over the last few months we have been blessed with reaching a point in business where our revenue is covering our expenses. Since we are a fully team owned software company without outside investors or stakeholders this presents a very unique opportunity. Since we are most passionate about building the strongest software product in the shed industry for you guys, and we are not being forced to make rushed decisions, we are able to really dedicate time to think deeply about the systems that we are building. We have spent weeks having open ended conversations as a team about the problems we are trying to solve with Shed Suite and how the system is divided into parts that work together as a whole.
We have made some pretty cool discoveries, and we really feel that this type of system thinking approach to building Shed Suite was a key missing tool that we will be using moving forward.
As a software company we are always being asked what we are working on and what we have planned next. I enjoy being transparent and letting you all in on what we are building. I have learned over the last few years that some features are a moving target so sharing in detail about our big picture plans and vision is not always best since it does change as we work towards our goals.
As a small business ourselves we realize that you all are making business decisions everyday. This is why we want to try to keep you as informed as we can with what you can expect from Shed Suite as we continue to build the software.
As we’ve grown with you over the last few years we have learned so much more about your businesses and the problems you all need solved. We have realized that our current model for how we are storing and processing data is not what it could be.
We have decided to take the knowledge we have gained over the last 3 years, and redesign the underlying system and data model into what we envision to be a super strong and scalable model.
We don’t want to bore you with all the technical details. But what we do is technical and we want to share enough with you that you feel informed, so you can make good business decisions.
We are calling this system redesign project,
This first question I would assume most of you will have is “When will Shed Suite 2.0 be done?” That is the hardest question to answer. Since this project will involve some prototyping and validation of some new tech, we can’t know for sure! We are doing our best to make a detailed plan for this project, and I am happy to continue to share more as that plan develops.
So your next question may be “What does that mean for Shed Suite 1.0 (the app we are all using today)?” It means that it won’t be negatively affected at all, and we will keep fixing bugs and adding small features to it for the foreseeable future. Our main goal with version 1.0 has shifted to extreme system reliability and performance. We will keep working on the system to make it run better and faster as we develop Shed Suite 2.0.
Our goal is to get Shed Suite 2.0 to “Feature Parity” (technical jargon for making the new system work as good or better than the old system). Once we hit this goal we will give current customers the option to migrate to 2.0, and we will also be starting new companies in 2.0.
After all current customers that want to migrate have migrated we will begin adding new features to 2.0.
Some large new features we will be adding to 2.0 that the current system was not optimized for are:
- 3D Shed Builder and Ecommerce Shopping Experience for Customers
- Ability to edit customer orders and track the revision history of orders
- Advanced Model and Option Configuration Rules
- User activity and audit log for tracking user’s add, update, and delete actions
- Open API for our users to use to build apps and integration alongside Shed Suite
In the last 3 years we have also become so much more aware of the key role that RTO plays in the business model for Shed Companies. So along with new big features we want to add to the new system, we are excited to start building out more RTO features in a more dedicated software app called RTO Suite. We see great opportunity to help solve challenging problems for RTO companies. Such as, managing Rental Returns and reselling those buildings, customer account management, and billing.
We are very excited about the future and are more passionate than ever to build you all the BEST shed software available.
Our whole team is rooting for you and we LOVE seeing you all use Shed Suite everyday!
Have a blessed week, everyone!
-Jason and the Shed Suite Team
P.S. I have found that I really do enjoy writing, so I am making a commitment to communicate with you all more often via our blog.
