The other day, I was chatting with a friend of ours who works at a media agency here in Mumbai. She was explaining to me how haphazard the work environment is over there. Some of the things that she mentioned that were wrong with their 40 member company are:

- no clear responsiblities for any of their employees
- no deadlines or clear workflow. Hence, training new employees becomes a huge headache
- missed deadlines for every project
- lack of a employees handbook or any written process that can be followed.
- and more…

This is a classic case of dis-organization, inefficiency and an un-productive environment. Amazingly, the company has been going on like this since more than 5 years. Wow! Its like driving a car in first gear instead of overdrive. Either way the car is moving except it consumes more fuel (money, resources, unhappy customers, employees etc.) when its in first gear! There are many solutions to take your company into overdrive. If you feel you are stuck in first gear, I would highly, highly recommend reading Micheal Gerber’s E-Myth. This is what guides us here at DeskAway to produce a better service and a better company!

We have been using Google AdWords & Analytics for quite some time now (started with Analytics when it was released in end of 2005). These tools let you put up your ads on Google search, measure website traffic, who is doing what, demographics, conversion rates and more. It’s amazing that your campaigns are live in 15-20mins. After a day you can start to measure your efforts.

Within a week it’s easy to calculate ROI. If something requires tweaking, you go back to the site and improve one of your existing campaigns. You are done! Start measuring again….

Simply beautiful!

I don’t think any other offline media offers this kind of a real time, easy to change marketing initiative.

If this kind of a fanatic measure of results is possible in marketing (thanks to the web), then why not in our daily information-overloaded workplace. Keeping client projects aside, what if we could measure and track every small process in our company or group with our very own DeskAway account.

So, here is what we did:

1. Created a new project for HR to have all HR stuff in one place. Our assistant is the project lead:
   1. Ongoing creation of a HR Master Manual.
   2. Uploading of final candidates to interview with comments from the whole team (post the interview).
   3. Uploading of employee NDA and other files.
   4. Create Task Lists of what the assistant has to do.
2. Created a new project for Invoicing
   1. Have all invoices uploaded to the File section.
3. Created a new PR/Media Project
   1. Stores all information that the media houses might require – logos, snapshots of founders, description of service, screenshots etc.
   2. Luckily, we have 2 people from our PR Company also on the project so sharing things with them becomes very easy.
4. Monthly Planning project – this is my personal project where I keep a track of what I (as the founder) have to do to run this business smoothly.
   1. On the first of every month I load a template (using our new Templates functionality) that serves as a guide to me for the rest of the month. This template has task lists that are broken down into Project Management, Online Marketing, Daily, Sales, R&D, Features, and Legal etc. Each Task List has tasks associated with what I have to do, look at or just monitor (e.g. Google Analytics or AdWords).
5. Network Administration Project – this is our network guy’s space.
   1. We post issues related to our computers and network.
   2. Complex and hard to understand Unix commands, network procedures are documented within the Doc section of this project.
   3. Hours are added to the timesheet so we know how much time we are spending on network related issues.
6. Company Website project – this is where we plan and delegate the next set of changes that goes live on our corporate and product site.
   1. Each major page on our site has a Task List. Whenever there is change to that page, a new task is delegated out to the web designer.

With Personal Email Reminders, each and every team member is up to date with what he/she has to do. Just like how Analytics & AdWords help us measure our online marketing initiative, DeskAway helps us measure our daily workplace progress, set higher standards and make our employees feel on track!

Do you use DeskAway in any another way? We are eager to hear about it!

The world is going green and after exchanging a few emails with Sarosh, a good friend of mine in San Fransisco (he runs a foundation called sustainable-future.org), it got me thinking about how people could put ‘green’ practices in project management and collaboration.

1. Don’t hit the Print unless you absolutely need a copy. Too many times, project plans change and the copy you just printed gets tossed into the bin!

2. Put your To-do’s online instead of using scraps of paper.

3. Go web-based - rather than buying a new server, software (taking into account packaging etc.), its better to use an online software service. Less power consumption, paper use and fuel!t

Think of any more ways that people can use ‘green’ practices when working with their team? Feel free to comment on this blog.

In the last year or so, there have been numerous project management/collaboration applications sprout up on the Internet. So, last evening we took some time off and started to brainstorm as to where does DeskAway fits in. Here is what we have come up with. DeskAway’s simplicity, rich feature-set and low prices automatically positions itself in-between the simple and complex (priced at per user per month) project management software.

Knowing where you stand is amazing - it brings a level of confidence, clarity and a new meaning to what you are doing!

Here is an interesting article on the connection between ‘young workers’ or ‘millennials’ and web2.0 apps in the enterprise. Do they really break the rules? Not quite, though they can give some valuable feedback and assessments of the web 2.0 tools that they try out over the cloud! These guys know whats good and whats bad, how to navigate a site and what makes one app better than the rest. IT decisions are going to be moved from the IT Dept. (whatever that is) to the end consumer in the enterprise. Every web software company will need to cater to the end consumer rather than the enterprise!

http://www.cio.com/article/328964/Younger_Workers_More_Likely_to_Break_Corporate_Rules_for_Web_Apps/1