For far too long, CRM systems, enterprise SMS/MMS services and short codes, email distribution softwares, product management system and etc, have either been too expensive or too complicated for lay men and women to use. Even for the IT literate, it can be quite daunting sometimes. EzyPzy (http://www.ezypzy.com.my) puts the user back into the picture and pays more attention to the user experience instead of just pumping out as many unnecessary features as possible.

Developed by EzyPzy Sdn Bhd, the web application was launched at a ceremony officiated by Encik Roslan Bakri Zakaria, the Head of the Tecnopreneur Development Division of the Multimedia Development Corporation (MDeC) Malaysia during the World Congress of Information Technology (WCIT) at the Kuala Lumpur Convention Centre.

The CEO of EzyPzy Sdn Bhd, Chief Ezy - Mr Aaron Gill, said that the EzyPzy story started with a very simple idea back in 2006.

“We thought about developing an application to allow real estate agents to upload and manage their property listings online and push it to potential leads via the mobile phone. One thing led to another, and we set about building and branding the application for a much larger and totally undefined userbase and not just limited to real estate agents anymore,” he said.

“We now offer EzyPzy to everyone and anyone who wants an avenue to manage all their contacts with ease as well as delivering and disseminating information to those who request for it.

Best of all, you can use EzyPzy for free and still have access to all the features. As you add more contacts and listing, you can upgrade to the paid plans. It is a pay-as-you-use service, with no long-term contracts, no sign-up fee and no penalties for cancellations. You can upgrade or downgrade your plan at any time. You make the choice!

EzyPzy Sdn Bhd, a MSC status company, was one of the first five recipients of the MSC Malaysia Technoprenuer Pre-Seed Fund.

“The Pre-Seed Fund addresses the funding gap at pre-seed stage and is expected to boost the development of commercially viable ICT projects and kick off a chain reaction in the creation of new local K-SMEs in ICT,” said Encik Roslan.

“The targeted beneficiaries are local Technopreneurs. Only individuals are eligible to apply, not existing companies. The programme offers up to RM150k of conditional funding to develop viable business plans into commercially focused ICT projects with prototype and detailed business plans suitable for venture funding and commercialization.”

“We are proud to note that not only did EzyPzy Sdn Bhd come up with their prototype, but they went ahead and developed a full-fledged system, which they are now offering to the public,” said Encik Roslan.

As you’ve of course heard, we’ve officially launched EzyPzy in Malaysia! You have absolutey no idea how psyched we were of that, and how relieved we were after it all happened!

WICT 2008 was quite an experience. We had this little kiosk under the MSC Malaysia Pavillion, nice spot that had quite a bit of traffic passing by. It wasn’t without some glitches, though. We discovered on that Monday morning, the first day of the event, that the broadband provided was not enough to cater for us all the exhibitors and guests present. Imagine what kind of problem that gave us, as EzyPzy is a web-based product! And like total doofs we didn’t install a local copy, thinking what was provided should be good enough - world class event and all that. We quickly rectified that by making sure the iMac we used as a display unit had EzyPzy installed locally. Problem solved.

The Prime Minister stopped by to check EzyPzy out! It was part of his WICT tour, and he spent a minute listening to Aaron tell him what’s so EzyPzy. That was about noon on Day One, and we were pretty shocked and excited about the encounter. So shocked and excited, that I totally missed taking a photo of that highlight moment! Sorry, Aaron!

The other days were alright. Lots of people came by. We kind of developed a system of marketing. Mei Fern, our temp promoter, would stand in front of the booth and give out our interesting looking flyers, and when the person showed interest, she’d direct them to me or Aaron for a more detailed explanation. She was not bad, and I joked that if WICT was five days long she’d be getting everyone she talked to signing up by the fifth day. Aaron and I would take turns being at the booth.

Most of the people who came by were pretty impressed with EzyPzy. One or two even came up with good ideas for expansions, future features, and usages. One dude said he could use it while he’s overseas; for example, if he were in the States and wanted to send an SMS to his parents back in Malaysia… and not need to pay the extra roaming charges! Pretty nifty idea, especially for students.

And then came our launch! We were a bit worried and running around frantic before the event, setting things up, some worries here and there. But thankfully, it all went good. Mohanna did great as Emcee, and Encik Roslan gave a pretty cool speech (”I’m just gonna wing it!” he said!). Check out the videos!

So well, we’re all out there, launched and ready. Next stop, Singapore.

I’ll keep this blog post short, but next, I’ll have to talk about the day RTM came by our office and did an interview for a series they had going! Stay tuned!

Part One - Introduction

Part Two - Speech from Chief Ezy, Aaron Gill

Part Three - Demonstration

Part Four - Continuation of Demo

Part Five - Intermission

Part Six - Speech from Head of Technopreneur Development Division, MDeC, Mr Roslan Bakri Zakaria

Part Seven - Giving of goodie bag, and close

http://www.ezypzy.com

WCIT 2008 will be held at the Kuala Lumpur Convention Centre on May 18 – 22, 2008. Themed “The Global Impact of Information and Communications Technology: Enable Businesses, Empower Societies, Enrich Economies”, the five-day event is expected to draw more than 2,500 delegates from over 80 countries.

Ezypzy will be launching on 21 May (Wednesday) at the 16th World Congress on Information Technology (WCIT 2008), so this is the moment that all the EzyPzy team members waiting for so long, finally the day coming as we wish. Cheers!

Launching details:

1.00 pm, Wednesday 21st May 2008

Booth 215, MSC Malaysia Pavillion, Exhibition Hall 2, Kuala Lumpur Convention Centre

Importing Contacts

This could mean a few things. You could use this method if you already have your contacts data somewhere else (like in your Gmail/Yahoo/Hotmail/whatever e-mail account, your phone, etc), and want to transfer it.

Anyway, whatever the scenario, here’s how you do it.

1. First of all, you have to prepare the contacts file that you want to import into ezypzy. You can do that by simply exporting from your email account/email client/phone/wherever. You should select the “export as CSV” function, if it is available.

In this “HOW TO” I’m suggesting doing a combination of both, as you want to make sure that your contacts database is properly done up.

NOTE: If, however, you are unable to export to a CSV file, then you might want to take a look at these instructions how to enter your contacts data into a CSV file (for example, your contacts might exist in some address book… the paper kind).

2. Go to your ezypzy account, and on to the Contacts page, click on the “Import and Bulk Add Contacts” link that is sitting on the right column, under Services. The Import and Bulk Add Contact function will appear at the top of your contacts list.

3. Click on Import From Ezypzy CSV Template.

4. Click on Generate Default Template.

5. Open both the CSV file you exported from your email, and the template in your spreadsheet programme (like Microsoft Excel).

6. Cut and paste the information your exported CSV file to the relevant columns in the generated template CSV.

NOTE: When filling in mobile phone numbers, be sure to fill it with the country code in front. For example, the phone number 015-3110101 should be entered as “60153110101″.

7. Save your new contacts file (make sure the extension is .CSV), and upload it to Ezypzy. You might need to repeat Steps 2 and 3, and then click on the “Browse” button to select your file, and then click “Upload“.

Your contacts should be imported.

Bulk Adding Contacts

This means adding lots of contacts at one go. At this time, you can only add four fields per contact - lack of space and all that. Soon, you’ll be able to add more stuff. Keep with us.

Alternatively, you could also Bulk Add contacts from an spreadsheet (like a Microsoft Excel file). Click here to find out.

1. Go to the Contacts page

2. Click on “Import and Bulk Add Contacts” link that is sitting on the right column, under Services. The Import and Bulk Add Contact function will appear at the top of your contacts list.

3. Click on Bulk Add Contacts

4. From the four drop down fields that appear, choose the details you want to add. For example, “First Name”, “Last Name”, “Contact (Mobile)”, and “Email (Office)”.

5. When you’re done selecting which fields you want to add, just click on “Add”. Fill in your contact details. Click “Add” everytime you want to add a new contact.

NOTE: When filling in mobile phone numbers, be sure to fill it with the country code in front. For example, the phone number 015-3110101 should be entered as “60153110101″.

6. Click on the Submit button when you’re done. At anytime, you can click “Cancel” to, well, cancel.

Bulk Add Contacts from a spreadsheet

1. Go to the Contacts page

2. Click on the “Import and Bulk Add Contacts” link that is sitting on the right column, under Services. The Import and Bulk Add Contact function will appear at the top of your contacts list.

3. Click on Import From Ezypzy CSV Template.

4. Click on Generate Default Template.

5. Open both the template CSV file that you generated in your spreadsheet programme (like Microsoft Excel).

6. Just start typing the information into the relevant columns. One row per contact.

NOTE: When filling in mobile phone numbers, be sure to fill it with the country code in front. For example, the phone number 015-3110101 should be entered as “60153110101″.

7. Save your new contacts file (make sure the extension is .CSV), and upload it to Ezypzy. You might need to repeat Steps 2 and 3, and then click on the “Browse” button to select your file, and then click “Upload”.

Your contacts should be imported.

Congratulations and thank you for signing up for your Ezypzy account. We know that most people don’t usually read these sort of welcome messages, but we hope you will anyway, as we would like to tell you some of the ins and outs of your new Ezypzy account.

So you’re signed up with Ezypzy… what now?

Start off with your contacts database

You could start by entering in your contact details. There are a few ways you could do this: adding them one by one, adding them in bulk, or importing them. Instructions for bulk adding can be found here, and instructions for importing here (along with a nifty video here).

Don’t forget to TAG your contacts! Tag them as how you would like to remember them. Here are some examples how you could do this:

Is he a colleague? Tag COLLEAGUE

A relative? Tag him a RELATIVE

Danny introduced her to you? Tag her DANNY’s FRIEND

… and she’s an attractive number that you want to get to know better? Tag her a HOTTIE

Well, you get the idea. The main thing is to tag them so that the next time you want to search for them and all similar contacts, all you need to do is click the right TAG, and you’ll see a whole list of them. You might also want to think about how you want to use Ezypzy: this will certainly help you figure out what tags to use. You might want to use Ezypzy to organise your wedding, so you’ll want to tag your contacts as Bridesmaid, Helpers, Caterers, etc. If you have a Band, then you might tag them as Fans, Bandmembers, Club Owners, Gig Managers, and so on. Check out our blog at http://blog.ezypzy.com for ideas on how to put Ezypzy to use.

Use the Custom Fields feature in each Add Contact Form to add as much information as you wish. Create templates for each type of contact you would like to have… for example, you might wish for all your “Employees” type contacts to have the field “Work Experience”, or all “Relative” contacts to have a “Relation to you” field (so that you figure out which one’s your second cousin once removed, and which is your third cousin’s father in law… or something like that).

Going on to Listings

Listings is a way you can get information out to your users on-demand. How does that work? Here’s a scenario.

Let’s say, in a week long music event where performers change each night, and are at different locations. So, the user create a Listing for “Performers Today” . The user can then enter in the relevant details, and assign “PerformersToday” as the EzyKode. Next, the user post up in posters, bulletin boards and wherever: “To know who is performing today, type EZY PerformersToday and send it to 36881″.

Immediately and automatically, when the public sees the code, and upon sending the Text Message request, the public will receive an Text Message reply with the relevant details, in this case: “Performers Tonight: Mindy Smith at Stage 1 @ 7pm, Jewel at Stage 2 @ 7.30pm, Deana Carter at Stage 3 @9pm”.

Another scenario would be if you wanted to sell something, like, a house. Classifieds and signage space is pretty limited, right? So you could put it on the “For Sale” signboard “For more information about this house, and to receive images, send EZY HOUSE001 to 36881”. This means you would have to create a Listing Item for the house, set HOUSE001 as the EzyKode, and insert all the details you wish your users to have.

When a request for information is made via the Listing, the number will be captured, and Ezypzy users can choose to add this person to their contact list, effectively becoming a lead generation tool. People who have used Ezypzy to manage their clients have found this especially useful, as each time a request is made, they can follow up and convert the Lead to a Client or just manage their Client relationship better.

Send out Text Messages

Once you have entered your contact details and have Tagged them appropriately, you are ready to start broadcasting stuff! Just click on any of the tags to send out group Text messages.

Don’t forget to top up your Ezypzy credit so that you will be able to send out messages.

Tasks

You can create notes, and can convert a note to a task by simply assigning a due date for it. In addition to that, reminders can be set and you can choose to receive those reminders via Text Messaging or E-mail. These Notes can be just general notes, or can be tied to a Contact or a Listing. Just click on “Add a Task” which appears at the bottom of the Contacts page, or on each Contact Details page.

Get to it!

So there you have it, the ins-and-outs of your Ezypzy account. Please check the website and our blog from time to time, to updated about the new features of Ezypzy, as well as to get ideas on how you may use it.

Okay, so let’s say you have Beauty Pageant going on. Create a Listing for each contestant. What sort of information do you think the public would like to know about them? Add those in. You might also want to include ranking information, like, how many votes they have right now, or what position they are in, is it a decrease or increase, etc. If I were running the beauty pageant, I might put in something like:

Name: Alisa Pan
Age: 23
Occupation: Marketing Student
Organisation: UPM
Hometown: Kuantan
Height: 157cm
Talents: Song and Dance

… and I might include a photo for WAP push.

Then set ezykodes for each of the contestants. Lets say this is the GirlNextDoor Pageant or some such thing, so I set the ezykode as gnd-[name]. Like, gnd-alisa.

Now for the marketing bit! You might want to put it out on billboards or on TV, “To know more about Alisa, SMS ‘ezy gnd-alisa’ to 36881. Or you might want to do T-Shirts! Get Alisa to wear them.

So maybe when the public tries to find out more and makes an SMS request, they might get something like this!

“GirlNextDoor 2009 (gnd-alisa): Alisa Pan, 23, Marketing Student @ UPM; Hometown:Kuantan, Height:157cm, Talents: Song & Dance”.

And they’ll also get a photo. Which would already be resized for mobile devices, perfect for setting as a phone wallpaper.

You can easily use the same concept for electoral events, like, for your college council elections (in this case, you might want to tell people about which faculty they are in, what year, what major, etc). I’m sure you can think up of other ideas how you can use Ezypzy in this case.

You’ll want to create Listings of all the properties you are trying to sell. Lets say you have two houses, three apartments on your list. Each of them probably have already been assigned some kind of code, like HSE881. If not, assign your own. These codes can be use as the Listing’s Ezykode. Enter the relevant information regarding that property into that Listing, like, number of rooms, bathrooms, built up area, etc. You might not want to include every single thing into your Text Message, and some editing might be necessary. In the end, your Text Message might look like this:

“Serviced Residence, AskingPrice: RM310K, RentalPrice:RM2K, Rooms:3, Bath:3, Fully Furnished, Vacant”

You might also want to include a photograph of the apartment.

Enter something into the Title part, for example, your agency name, your name, but make it short as you don’t want to eat up too much Text space.

Next, Advertise! Put up, very clearly on the signboard or poster or in the classifieds where you are advertising this property: “For more information and photos, SMS “EZY HSE881 to 36881”.

So, when interested buyers come across the house, they’ll see that line and when they give it a try, they’ll receive a reply like this:

“Leo Properties Ltd (HSE881): Serviced Residence, AskingPrice: RM310K, RentalPrice:RM2K, Rooms:3, Bath:3, Fully Furnished, Vacant”

Nifty? Hey, but we’re not done yet!

Everytime a request is made, you’ll be notified via the dashboard, as well as in the Reports section. The mobile number that made the request will be displayed, so you can then choose to call them up, thank them for their interest, arrange for a viewing. And when you have their contact details, you can just click on that number in the the Reports, and save them as a Contact in your Ezypzy database!

Once you have them as a Contact, you can keep them updated whenever you have a similar property available, via the Mass SMS/E-mail feature. So, you might also want to tag them, for example, if they asked about an Apartment, tag them something like “APARTMENT POTENTIAL”.

Okay, so now you know how Ezypzy can work for Real Estate agents, go sell some houses! Oh, and if any of us at Ezypzy ever are looking for a place, please do cut us a nice deal!

They have just won the Peugeot distributorship for Malaysia and would like to gather the details of all current Malaysian Peugeot owners. So part of their strategy was to create an online form where these owners could key in their info.

Since we already did something similar for Dreamgirls, this should be cakewalk. Of course we had to put in an extra item for this form. Car details.

Why I call it extra is because we initially used our custom fields for this and realised, “hey arent people allowed to own more than one Peugeot car?”.

So that’s why we had to add a special Car Details fields group for them, much like how we did it with the addresses, which is a standard ezypzy contact field group.

As usual, we also tagged the online registrants as ‘online’ and on top of that, we also tagged them according to their car model so that Naza would be able to quickly list out all contacts who owns a particular model.

So right now we just need to add in the Export Contacts function, and Naza should be happy with our service.

However the more technical setback was the fact that the Dreamgirls team kept changing their audition form fields. And on top of that, they wanted some really custom fields like Height, Weight, vital stats and etc. So what did we do? We gave them custom fields! Wooohoooo!

So basically we told them, if you decide to change the form again, just change the custom fields. The custom field feature was not too hard to do since we’ve already done it for the Listing module. They have pretty similar stuff, for instance you can create various contact templates that have a list of different custom fields.

In other words, you could have a contact template for your vendors, another one for your customers, another one for your employees, another one for the hot Facebook chicks you’ve been stalking when you can’t sleep at night (oh wait, that’s just me I think). Anyway you get the idea.