Brought this over from the Yahoo 'GMGC club' made for some very
interesting reading. 3 parts. here's part I:
Allow me to share my recent
GMGC experience FWIW
mojo__3
Apr 2 1999
1:25PM EST
Hey gang, given the tremendous amount of valuable info that has been shared here recently, I feel
obligated to share some of the info that I received from one of the GMGC Platinum Resellers
recently. What follows is my email correspondence about Portico and its applications for the
company that I am working for (yes, my interest in Portico's service is genuine, I was not "sand
bagging" to get GMGC info). Not a lot of new info, but there are some gems in here and it is straight
from the horse's mouth. Read on. BTW, the AOL reference below - - was that known by all? It was
news to me.
<<<<I am in the process of gathering information for my company's sales force regarding PDA's,
Virtual Assistants, etc to arm our sales force with. I have received information on a service/product
called Webley, and I know about
> > Wildfire (although I don't believe that it offers the web capabilities that we
> > will require in such a service).
This is a large (F-500) company, but it is fairly traditional and very conservative (much to my
dismay). One of the things that I must prove to the powers that be is that they will not be guinea pigs
and that this service is ready to use and can increase productivity in the "here and now". So, first of
all, I need to know how long Portico has been around? How is it working overall (an honest, frank
answer would be much more helpful than a canned PR response here)? Are many people using it
today (or would we be one of the
first to try it)? Are their any enhancements that are being made to the service that I should know
about? And finally, why should I choose
Portico over other products (give me the whole sales pitch - - strengths, weaknesses of
Portico and the competitiors' products and of virtual assistants as a whole as well as your take on the
future of such products). I need to know if this type of good/service is a fad or if we are on the verge
of a Virtual Assistant
revolution.
I would also like a bit of background on your company so that I may take this to the decision makers.
Please contact me via email at this address.
Regards, Matt XXXXXXXXXX
Director of Web-Based Commerce
PART II cont'd:
Dear Matt:
Thanks for your inquiry. First lets start with Wildfire, Webley and Portico. I used to sell Wildfire and
put it into the Sharper Image and Lifestyle fascination catalog, so i am quite familiar withit. I stopped
using and selling Wildfire to do both with Portico. Before I made the decision to add Portico to our
product
portfolio, I met with the people at Webley Systems. There was no comparison.
Portico was created by General Magic, a public company. Portico has been on the market for almost
a year and it was beta tested for a year before that. Its investors include Microsoft and America
Online. This is particularly pertinent
because America Online allows Portico to access email from its servers (+4 others at
any given time), something Webley and Wildfire cannot do.
In terms of how it is working, I can tell you that I personally am hooked. What
I find, and this is also true for my customers, is that the features of most interest
to any given customer dramatically increase productivity. It is not something you
can necessarily measure but intuitively it is clear. Given that Portico follows you and screens calls
(pick the highest income related callers), brings voice mail and email together (soon fax inbound as
well-outbound only now (unified messaging gains)), reading and replying to email from any phone
and constant access to your
schedule and contacts, gains in productivity seem logical.
There are a number of users on the system and if you wanted to talk to a user that would be fine as
long as they gave their permission first. The exact total number of users is not known by us and
General Magic does not release this information. Some of the enhancements that are coming soon:fax
inbound and forward, personal customization of the upfront experience a caller receives,
conferencing and different choices of Portico personalities.
Portico outshines its competitors for subtle and not so subtle reasons. If you try Wildfire, you will see
that it does not allow you to barge in and do business as you see fit.Webley does but does not
understand as well.People want to do business in a manner that fits their personality. Secondly, you
will see that Portico is designed
to fit the customer in how its used and responds.Its almost freewheeling in its
nature and help is always there if you say help or don't say anything. I already mentioned the AOL
advantage and it also sychronizes your contacts and calender from Act, Sidekick,Outlook,Lotus and
soon the Palm Pilot.Other features that make it
unique, is its ability to track news on competitors, track stock portfolio's and
filter the email as well as being paged for special emails.
As more companies outsource, as the number of small businesses increase, as the flow of information
and its acess becomes more critical, the need for a virtual assitant becomes more important. this
market will develop more rapidly and will be an integral part of both our personal and business
lives. Phone Link Plus has been around for 2 years and you are welcome to check out our web site at
www.phonelinkplus.com. All customers are supported by General Magic and
ourselves. We are currently doing a promotion to give people a chance to try Portico.The promotion
waives the $50 setup fee, takes $19.95 off any first months service and allows you to take advantage
of Annual pricing plans and no
> termination penalties for 30 days. our pricing is on our web site.
If there is anything else I can do, please call me at 877-882-5000.
>
Regards, Ben Smullyan
President-Phone Link Plus
PART III cont'd:
Ben,
Thank you for the timely reply! I am still in the preliminary stages of this information gathering, but I
must tell you that you have made the most convincing argument of the 3 companies that I have emailed
(Webley, Wildfire and
Portico).
I may be getting a bit ahead of myself by asking these secondary questions, but your response has
piqued my curiosity about several things. First of all, the additional personalities. What do you mean
by that? Would the user be able
to select which "character" they would like to have work for them (sounds like a video game!)? Is
there a timeframe in place for this or the new faxing capabilities (even a rough estimate would suffice
- - does General Magic operate
> quickly in this area or are they slow to develop and release new features?).
The thing that intrigued me most was your reference to Microsoft and America
OnLine. Many of our folks live and die by their MS tools on the road but still
want to maintain their personal AOL account as well. Access to both or
multiple would be ideal. Are you saying that Portico can work with multiple
email accounts from different providers at the same time? You also mention
that "its investors include Microsoft and America Online". Is General Magic a separate company
from these two? A spin off? Do they have a vested interest in General Magic or Portico? How are
they related to General Magic? The
> reason that this is such a concern to me is that I don't want to get caught using the service of a little
company that could have its "ties" broken to the big players that we want our sales force to be
connected to. This will be a big selling point to the "powers that be" over here, so I want to be clear
on who General Magic is and how they interact and are linked with the major players
> like Microsoft and America Online (are there any others like 3COM, Netscape, Nextel, etc. that I
should know about?)
Thank you again for the information. It was certainly helpful to hear you perspective (particularly in
light of your Wildfire experience).
Regards, Matt
Director of Web-Based Commerce
Matt:
The personalities are slated for this year but as of yet, the timing is unknown.The
scuttlebut is that you would choose your personality on your Portico area on the
Internet and the voice recordings that are used now would be of that personality
(i.e.happy and cheerful, dominant...) Fax inbound is a major priority for General
Magic and as such, my guess is by the second quarter.Every couple of weeks, on
Saturday in the middle of the night, some update is usually done.
Portico will access up to 5 ISP's every 15 minutes,including AOL, to pull out a copy
of the email.The exception is servers with firewalls in which case the administrator
can arrange to have copies automatically sent into that person's portico account.
General Magic is a company that has been public since the '80's and has partnered
with AOL, Microsoft, Quicken and others to expand the use of the Portico product and
its VUI interface.The former head of Novell is the CEO of General Magic and they
have the bucks and the structure to make sure your company is supported as needed.
Ben Smullyan
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