Welcome to our second edition of the Synage Inside ePublication, a monthly newsletter on simple things you can do to increase productivity in your organization. For all our new subscribers, you can check out the first edition on the DeskAway blog by clicking here.

Whether you are a freelancer, manage a small office or are part of a large organization, you will benefit from the information provided in this publication. Thank you for your time and Happy Diwali!

Best,
Sahil Parikh
Founder, deskaway.com

The other day I was talking to a freelancer and he mentioned that he literally uses email for everything - for planning, organizing, sending files, sending reminders to himself, updating clients on progress etc. etc…wow, the list goes on. It’s amazing how email has become the killer-app for every individual and company (oh, I forgot the Blackberry!). People cannot do without email. Why should they? It’s always there, open right in front of you to take advantage of. It’s simple to use, free and staring right in my face as I write this newsletter! It’s great for getting updates and notifications but it doesn’t do too well as a knowledge management tool. This is the same problem the freelancer had. He sends out a few files for review to others and then it turns out that he spends a few hours next few days digging through his email compiling comments/ suggestions and merging different versions. On another occasion, he got burnt by his client since they exchanged so many files that the one that he worked on finally was the wrong one. Ouch!

What I am seeing is that we are slowing moving (or will move) away from email. Take for example the much acclaimed social networking site Facebook - you can message your friends right from the app. Gauranteed no spam since you can only send and recieve to people in your network. Ditto LinkedIn.

As we get busier day-by-day, collaborating with people from across the globe, time is going to be of immense value. Anything that saves time is going to be the “killer” app. So, I leave you with an article I read a while back by Lars Plougmann call “A 10-to-1 rule of email based project management“. This is just one of the ways people can save time and money when on the clock! For everything else, there is email

Would love to hear your views on this here.

We all surf the web daily and bookmark sites that we want to reference later. What happen’s when you are on another computer and need to access that site you bookmarked 2 weeks ago? Tools like del.icio.us solves these problems and more. From the website: del.icio.us is a collection of favorites - yours and everyone else’s. You can use del.icio.us to: * Keep links to your favorite articles, blogs, music, reviews, recipes, and more, and access them from any computer on the web.
* Share favorites with friends, family, coworkers, and the del.icio.us community.
* Discover new things. Everything on del.icio.us is someone’s favorite — they’ve already done the work of finding it. So del.icio.us is full of bookmarks about technology, entertainment, useful information, and more. Explore and enjoy.

Never lose a bookmark again! Try this service for free by going to del.icio.us

Thank you for all those who have signed up on DeskAway after our first newsletter edition. Just to give you a heads-up, these are some of the features that we are adding in the next few weeks:

Reporting

A picture does speak a thousand words! In this case, it lets you visually see how your projects are performing. We will be adding a variety of printer-friendly charts and analytics to every DeskAway account (its free, ofcourse!).

Improved File Upload

Not only can you view the latest comment that is added to a file, but now you can see the different versions for the same file.

We are happy to have got the following reviews and mentions last month in leading Indian publications:

PCQuest Magazine- Synage’s DeskAway Software
Financial Express- Who needs an office address?

In this issue

Welcome!
Your business on auto-pilot - its simple!
DeskAway - live on the web!
Press
Contribution
Closing

Welcome to our first edition of the Synage Inside ePublication, a monthly newsletter on simple things you can do to increase productivity in your organization. You are recieving this email if (a) you have registered with us through our website at www.synage.com (b) are a paid/trial user of DeskAway (c) someone who has given us permission to add them to our mailing list (d) a friend of mine.

Whether you are a freelancer, manage a small office or are part of a large organization, you will benefit from the information provided in this publication. Thank you for your time!

Best,
Sahil Parikh
President, Synage Software Pvt. Ltd.

Last week, I read an interesting article on the E-Myth website that mentioned:

“People are unmanageable. Systems are not.”

This is so true. With people coming and going in any organization, what truly stands the test of time are systems or processes. A system or process is something that can be repeated over and over again (think how McDonalds makes its burgers!) to give your business the same results again and again. Identifying and documenting processes in your business will not only help you start automating the smaller things, but will free up resources, help you delegate better, increase team productivity and give you the scale you need to grow!

In fact, you can start creating a system now! Just take something that you or your team does repeatedly, document the process in detail, share the process with your team and then try to repeat it over and over again. Just like the steps in a cookbook. You can pretty much automate your entire business by creating simple processes that your team can use again and again!

By the way, Michael Gerber’s E-Myth Revisited is a great book for anyone aspiring to grow their business using a system-driven and methodical approach.

DeskAway, our on-demand project management software is live on the web. Do check it out at www.deskaway.com.

Deskaway provides users a central location to organize, manage and track company projects. We have a 30 day trial version for those who want to take it for a spin!

Why did we create this?
While managing multiple (sometimes over 30) projects simultaneously, we noticed that it was not practical to keep track of everything related to these projects via email, verbal communication or on scraps of paper. There were revisions to files, people had comments and provided feedback, there were tasks that needed to be delegated and tracked.

We just couldn’t do all of this through email and still work efficiently and smoothly. Bottom line, we were spending far too much time finding and planning things that were already planned just because there was no single place where everything was stored. We wanted to be in control of our projects at every minute, not have our projects and tasks control our already busy lives! We checked out some other existing solutions but that didn’t meet our expectations. Other products were either too simple or lacked common features for project management, or were hard to use and get around. We wanted (and thought that the other companies would too) something simple yet powerful, which could provide us with enough features to manage our projects efficiently. ‘Working smart’ became our goal and hence, DeskAway was born for people like us who like to be in control!

Vision
Our vision for DeskAway is to create a single window through which organizations can organize, manage and track their work, thereby increasing team productivity and growth. We believe software should be affordable, simple and yet powerful!

Being the very first project management software as a service (SaaS) in India, we have been fortunate to capture the attention of the press.

Aug 31, 2007 | CXOToday.com - Working smart became our goal
Aug 28, 2007 | CXOToday.com - Software as a Service: A good deal!
Aug 23, 2007 | tech2.com - Synage to Venture in Channels
Aug 14, 2007 | Indiatelevision.com - Synage launches software as a service ‘DeskAway’
Aug 08, 2007 | CXOToday.com - What CIOs Want and How They Plan
Aug 01, 2007 | CXOToday.com - Parksons Plays SaaS Card for Project Management