The NASSCOM Product Conclave is the biggest congregation of best minds from the Indian Product, Emerging and Startup technology companies during two action-packed days with a focus on ‘ideas to products to business’.

Vijay Rayapati and Avinash Raghava of the Organising Committee were kind enough to share their views on their experience with DeskAway to help them plan the Nasscom Product Conclave 2010 event…

Putting together a great event requires collaboration between many key stake holders to manage the communication, workflow and task dependencies. Hence, a hunt for a collaboration tool begun. Since the conference is all about ‘Made In India’ and ‘Product Startups’, we zero’ed in on DeskAway as our ultimate choice.

DeskAway effectively helped our 15+ member team to capture and manage the marketing and logistics related tasks for the entire event. This group comprised of people mostly from the Marketing as well as the Communications team.

What really helped the team collaborate effectively is that at any point we could measure and track our progress related to the planning of the event. Basic question like ‘what is done?’, ‘what is pending?’, ‘what needs to be done yet?’, ‘who is doing that stuff?’ were easily answered as every critical piece of information was stored centrally on DeskAway. This helped reduce the internal communication overhead (which normally happens via email) and helped us to focus on execution of the event.

The event was a huge success with over 1200 delegates, 600 companies and more than 80 speakers.

We look forward to using DeskAway again for 2011.

Thanks Vijay and Avinash and all the best for 2011.

GizaPage is a social media application suite that strengthens the relationship between brands and their communities. They have a simple to use social media dashboard to help brands optimize the time, network reach and drive community interactions on their social media initiatives.

Vijay Raypati, Head - Products, GizaPage has shared his views about DeskAway…

How are you using DeskAway and what value is it providing your team?
We use DeskAway to manage all tasks and milestones related to our product roadmap along with the to-do lists. It helps us to get organized and have a clear focus on deliverables.

DeskAway helps us to reduce the communication over-head amongst our team and also helps developers to easily manage there work items. The milestones feature is useful to define and track progress.

Were you using any other tool before DeskAway?
We were using Basecamp before moving to DeskAway.

Was there a learning curve associated with DeskAway? How did your team adapt to a new application?
I would say it takes less than 5 minutes to adapt to DeskAway. We really love the help section for each feature in the product, which helps anyone to get started easily.

What features does your team use the most?
We use Milestones, Task Lists, Email Comments and Work Progress Reports.

Are you emailing (sending tasks, attachments etc.) less because of DeskAway?
Yes, it helped us to cut down back & forth emails on to-do items and follow ups.

How has DeskAway helped in lowering project costs, profitability or improving efficiency?
It certainly helped us to improve the team/delivery efficiency since everybody is on the same page on product goals and milestones. This is very critical for startups and SME’s.

Are there any other thoughts that you would want to share with us regarding our service, product etc.?
Love the simplicity of the to-do lists and the help section. Keep it up!

Thanks!

If you are using DeskAway and would like to get featured, please drop us a note and we will get in touch with you.

BenefIT.com has featured and recommended DeskAway in its latest article on virtual teams and working away from the office.

Today, with people increasingly working away from their main offices, enabling them to remain connected is crucial to preserve the momentum of the business. Technology that helps remote workers connect, otherwise called remote working tools, simplifies the management of dispersed businesses.

A head popping out of a cabin calling out to team mates to assemble at the conference room in half an hour, was how meetings were announced when project members sat within shouting distance. Today, with the management head probably at the airport, the sales associate driving to a client’s office and other team members spread across cities, a call from a cabin would be meaningless. Managing teams in today’s globalised business environment has changed drastically with teams spread across geographies. And remote working tools enable employees to complete their work from locations other than their office base.

Working remotely – a rewarding experience
Remote working tools provide the three C’s – connection,communication and collaboration among colleagues, teams and peers. But, what perks does such ‘connectivity’ bring to the business? Lower operational costs, sidestepping geographical and time barriers, improved productivity, increased employee satisfaction and hence higher retention are some advantages of adopting remote working technology.

Read more…

The world is moving towards virtual, remote, dispersed teams. I know many of DeskAway users work with remote freelancers, partners and employees. This article busting common myths on remote working might be helpful to all of you’ll (written by Avdi Grimm of wideTeams).

Working in a dispersed team has its share of challenges, but some of the fears that people have about remote work simply aren’t born out by the experience of real-world teams. Here are a few if the more common misconceptions I’ve encountered.

Working outside the office is distracting. This is one of the most persistent myths I’ve run into. Sure, working from home can be distracting. But out of the remote workers I’ve talked to, the majority find their home office a better environment for focused work than a traditional office.Which shouldn’t really come as a surprise. After all, if you work with people you like, it means that your workplace is going to be filled with people you have a lot in common with, having conversations about things that are interesting to you! While I’m not proud of it, I’ve had hallway conversations that lasted for hours at some jobs.Not to mention that when people can see you, they are more likely to interrupt you to ask you a question or get a status update. Proximity invites disruption.

Read the other 4…

Mobicules is an agile web and mobile app development company, working with new technology ventures and some of the biggest brands around, helping them build sophisticated world class products while meeting aggressive go-to-market times required for web and mobile products today. We are a 40 people team and work with some very demanding clients spread all over the world. We have been at the forefront of the technologies we work on, and are very quick to adopt and adapt to technical and methodology changes.

Mobicules was founded by Munish Bansal and Niraj Ranjan Rout, who have a combined experience of more than 15 years in diverse technical areas such as the internet, VLSI design, EDA and mobile technologies.

“Everything in DeskAway works really well for us.”

Munish Bansal and Niraj Ranjan Rout, Mobicules Founder

This is how they use DeskAway,

How are you using DeskAway when growing your business?
In the last six months, we have moved the project management for all the projects running at Mobicules to DeskAway. DeskAway has helped us in communicating with our clients better, in keeping information documented, and in helping large teams collaborate better to achieve project targets.

Were you using any other tool before DeskAway?
We were using a combination of Redmine, Google Sites and BaseCamp before we switched to DeskAway.

Was there a learning curve associated with DeskAway? How did your team adapt to a new application?
It hardly took any time. Not just our team, our clients too switched from whatever we were using to DeskAway in time. The learning videos interspersed throughout the site greatly accelerated the learning process on DeskAway. Messages, Tasks, Files and Issues work in a very intuitive manner. The interface is really zippy, and we feel very comfortable working on DeskAway.

What features does your team use/like the most?
We use Messages, Tasks and Files very heavily. Being able to add comments to just about everything really helps.

Are there any other thoughts that you would want to share with us regarding our service, product etc.?
As for now, everything in DeskAway works really well for us. As a services company, we’d love to see features like time-logging by developers and automated timesheet creation for projects or developers. We find the pricing to be very good. We haven’t had a reason to contact the support team till now, but we have no reason to believe that the support would not be stellar.

Thanks!

If you are using DeskAway and would like to get featured, please drop us a note and we will get in touch with you.