Name and process (a bit long)

["by way of \"Eric J. Ray\" <ejray -at- raycomm -dot- com>" <Atlanticcr -at- AOL -dot- COM>]

In a message dated 10/29/98 1:02:33 PM Eastern Standard Time,
LLedger -at- NEWHORIZON -dot- CA writes:

> We have been looking for a name for our Human Resources/Payroll product
>  for quite some time now. We have come up with a few names, but nothing
>  has really caught our fancy.
>
>  What methods do you use for developing names? Name suggestions would be
>  appreciated. As the TW for the company, all eyes seem to be on me for an
>  answer to this.

If all eyes are on the TW - who's looking at the marketing folks? :-))

Joking aside, my company does quite a bit of work in the naming process for
software companies. From what I know about your product it would be impossible
to suggest anything but your run-of-the-mill PayMaster, HR-Demon, etc. names.

Before generating any name suggestions we work with the client to put the
Product ID in words. From there it's much easier to judge whether a suggested
name is good or bad. You basically want to infuse a bit of order into an
otherwise very chaotic process.

We try to get our clients to commit to the following process which (in various
shapes) has proved to work well in various scenarios over the last five years
(all stages must be well-documented):

1. Product ID statement (one, max two sentences)
    - who is the intended target group?
    - what does the product do for this group?
    - what is the main benefit for the customer vis-a-vis the competition?
(how's your product different AND better?)
    - in which way does it provide this benefit (i.e., simpler, faster,
integrated, cheaper, more reliable....)
2. Naming objective (usually an easy word that expresses the Product ID
perfectly)
3. Brainstorming
4. Sorting process
5. Three selected candidates for name
6. Trademark process (will usually knock out one or two candidates)

Someone will surely suggest to skip the Product ID step ("since everyone knows
it"), but in my experience it is crucial to the process. If the ID is written
down, it is much harder for someone (usually the top guys) to ruin lots of
hard work by just "not liking" the suggested names. This way, someone has to
argue that a candidate is out of synch with the Product ID and the naming
objcetive when "not liking" it.

Let me know if I can be of any help - we do this stuff as consultants.

Good luck with the process.

Erik Seifert
Atlantic Crossing, Inc.
www.atlanticcrossing.com

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