Official Daptiv Blog

New Daptiv User Group

2010-02-25T05:56:00Z

We are happy to announce the creation of a new Daptiv User’s Group in Philadelphia, PA. Due to demand in that area, and through the willingness of some awesome customers, it is exciting to see this local user’s group get started. The kickoff meeting for the user’s group will be on Wednesday, March 10^th at the PNC Bank Center in downtown Philadelphia. Doors open at 2:30pm and the program starts at 3pm.

For this initial kick off meeting, the program will consist of:

- Overview of Daptiv Community by Mike Jensen, VP of Community Development at Daptiv.

Mike will provide insight into Daptiv plans around both online and offline community efforts.

- Overview of Daptiv Consulting Services by Chris Broyles, VP of Professional Services at Daptiv.

Chris will introduce Daptiv Consulting Services and how we can help customers with the ongoing success of their implementation.

- Customer Case Study: Radian by Chris Tulino, Assistant Vice President at Radian.

Chris will be presenting how Radian has adopted Daptiv and specifically, their use of Resource Management capabilities.

The program will conclude with a networking/social opportunity sponsored by Daptiv.

If you are in the Philadelphia or surrounding areas, we welcome you to attend this kick-off event. For additional questions or to RSVP, please contact Aaron Berntson (aberntson@daptiv.com)

Location

PNC Bank Center

Center Hall

1600 Market Street

Philadelphia, PA 19102

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"Get the Most Out of Daptiv" Webinar Series

2009-11-13T19:01:00Z

To help your company get even more value from the Daptiv PPM service, Daptiv has created a new free webinar series. Each session will feature a special guest panelist, and executives from Daptiv giving tips and perspectives on how to help your organization better manage day-to-day business challenges using Daptiv PPM.

Topics will include:

Aligning Business Needs to Daptiv

Selecting The Right Projects

Defining & Optimizing Your Portfolio

Getting the Most Out of Scarce Resources

Methodologies to Fit the Job at Hand

For an overview of each of the webinars, who they're for, and what can be learned in each session, click here.

We hope to see you there!

Introducing Daptiv Scrum!

2009-06-09T16:47:00Z

Today marks the official launch of Daptiv Scrum, a complete solution for managing work in the Agile Scrum process. You can see the press release or solution page on Daptiv.com for more detailed information.

With the growing popularity of Agile development approaches, we're excited to offer a solution that works side-by-side with Daptiv PPM or separately (the Scrum management tools are also available without the full portfolio management and collaboration feature sets of Daptiv PPM). Either way, the Daptiv Scrum solution solves some problems that other Scrum tools have had trouble solving for companies:

Visibility

Isolation of Scrum teams from the rest of the business can help the development teams avoid distractions and stay focused. However, it can lead to a situation we're calling "Scrum Island" in which the business loses visibility into Scrum work. Companies that are running both Waterfall and Scrum development process run into problems giving shared visibility to both types of work, as they have no central source of truth for capturing information. Daptiv is perfectly positioned to solve these problems, as this Scrum solution comes with the full power of Daptiv Work Intelligence and its ability to share and visualize data using enterprise-class reporting and dashboard tools.

Flexibility

Scrum is a flexible process that can't be put in a box: there are many flavors of Scrum that preserve the essence of Scrum and adapt it to the needs of a particular organization and development team. Naturally then, teams shouldn't want inflexible Scrum software tools to run their process, right? Daptiv Scrum (like Daptiv PPM) is highly configurable and flexible enough to handle any of the flavors of Scrum.

Escape from Scrum Island

One of our company mottos at Daptiv (we even had recruiting business cards printed) is "Life's too short not to have fun." Well, we're having a lot of fun with our launch of Daptiv Scrum.

Play the game Escape from Scrum Island for a chance to win an Amazon Kindle, or read the Escape from Scrum Island white paper. And please speak to your Daptiv representative or Account Manager with any questions you have about Daptiv Scrum.

Daptiv PPM Spring '09 is now LIVE!

2009-03-23T21:53:00Z

Thank you, Henry!

(Note: Daptiv PPM Spring '09 went live for our On-demand customers on Saturday, March 21st)

Henry Gantt’s (1861-1919) vision for managing work led to the graphical schedules that still bear his name: Gantt charts today help managers and team members to plan, control and track work to get work done on time and under budget. Having launched the first online Gantt chart for PPM in 2002, Daptiv releases a better, faster and more complete Gantt chart with Daptiv PPM Spring ’09. Some of you were already using the next generation Gantt in beta form since the Winter '09 release.

New in the Gantt

Previously in Beta, the new Daptiv PPM Gantt chart adds additional features to make it easier for project managers to create and manage schedules:

A new Resource Utilization Details window lets you see daily utilization of all project resources, and make assignment decisions based on their availability over time
Copy and paste tasks within a schedule (preserving dependencies) lets you build out project schedules more quickly

More for Administrators

New quick filters on Project Lists make it easier to administer projects (this functions simlarly to the quick filters on Users Lists in the AdminZone).

Now ISO 27001 Cerified

With the launch of Spring ’09, Daptiv announces its new ISO 270001:2005 certification – meaning that Daptiv fulfills the International Organization for Standardization's (ISO's) requirements of operating an Information Security Management System (ISMS) – more confirmation that Daptiv has the systems and processes in place to protect its customers’ data.

It is Not the Strongest that Survives...

2009-01-20T00:43:00Z

I came across this quote from Charles Darwin recently in an editorial in Fast Company, and it strikes me as a propos in our current climate. This year is the 150th anniversary of the publication of On the Origin of Species and in that book Darwin said "It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is most adaptable to change."

I was speaking with one of our airline customers recently--and if there's an industry that's been having a tough time for a long time--it's the airlines. He was telling me about his experience over the past couple of years which included multiple rounds of layoffs of IT employees, but he was also very candid about his use of Daptiv PPM being a key thread for him to hold on to during the turbulence. He was able to make do with a radically smaller staff because his configuration of Daptiv PPM had allowed him to quickly re-prioritize and re-allocate work to people who remained.

It appears now that the entire economy is in the midst of turbulence, not just a single industry segment. For businesses, the ability to adapt to change this year will be key to surviving.

Daptiv Pays Back in Less than Two Months, According to Forrester Study

2009-01-14T20:23:00Z

Here at Daptiv, we are huge believers in the power of our Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solution and its ability to quickly provide value – letting organizations get an on-the-fly, comprehensive picture of what work is going on across departments and how that work impacts the bottom line. But we wanted some hard numbers on the actual value, or return on investment (ROI), that our customers were getting, so we commissioned a study from Forrester Consulting. Today we announced the results of this study, titled the "Total Economic Impact (TEI) of Daptiv PPM," which puts Daptiv payback at less than two months and delves into the specific value in using a Web-based tool to improve collaboration, increase accountability and gain greater visibility and business focus.

This compelling study backs up what we've known all along – Daptiv PPM has a fast ROI payback! Because Daptiv is a true SaaS product, not a traditional packaged software, there are cost savings due to reduction in internal IT support requirements, software license fees, server, and maintenance cost avoidance. Add increased productivity through process standardization and automated reporting, and an enhanced portfolio management process which leads to improved decision-making and increased productivity, and it's no wonder that our customers see ROI in under two months.

We'll be discussing this in more depth in a Webinar featuring Forrester consultant Michelle Salazar next Wednesday, January 21, 2009 at 11:30 a.m. ET (8:30 a.m. PT). To register for the free online event, please click here.

Sunset of Legacy Reporting Engine

2008-12-17T17:39:00Z

As you may know, Daptiv introduced Work Intelligence™ with the release of Daptiv PPM Fall ’07, which effectively replaced and surpassed the capabilities of something called the Advanced Reporting Engine (ARE), our legacy reporting engine based on Crystal Reports. (Note that ARE should not be confused with the Daptiv Advanced Report Builder.) In mid-year 2009, the Advanced Reporting Engine (ARE) is being discontinued in Daptiv PPM. For Daptiv PPM On-demand customers with ARE enabled in their enterprise, three options will be removed at that time:

1. The option to create Crystal Reports®

2. The option to create Custom Reports

3. The option to run previously uploaded Custom or Crystal reports

4. The option to access the Crystal Canned Reports List

Going forward, maintaining a single reporting engine will help Daptiv customers by focusing our development on other features/enhancements you need.

IF ARE is Enabled and Used in Your Enterprise

We recommend that customers who have not yet transitioned to Daptiv Work Intelligence begin to make that transition, which may include:

• Obtaining Daptiv Report Builder and/or Daptiv Advanced Report Builder licenses for your enterprise

• Obtaining training or coaching packages for these new tools if you have not already done so

• Creating new reports to replace ARE reports in use your enterprise

• Ordering replacement reports from Daptiv

Note that Daptiv PPM users have the native capability to run sample reports, to add reports to dashboards, and to embed reports in dashboards and to include links to reports in email. Daptiv Report Builder and Daptiv Advanced Report Builder are optional and additional subscriptions for creating reports.

If ARE is Not Enabled in Your Enterprise

If ARE is not enabled in your enterprise, or if is enabled but no longer used (which is true for many of our customers), there is nothing for you to do to prepare for the change.

Customers with ARE disabled in their enterprise may still notice one change: users will lose access to the Crystal Canned Reports List in Daptiv PPM. Daptiv will update its PPM sample reports to include more of the ad hoc reports available via ARE.

PDF Downloads

Daptiv Work Intelligence Data Sheet http://www.daptiv.com/document_library/sales/Daptiv_Work_Intelligence_Data_Sheet.pdf

For more information about Daptiv Report Builder and Daptiv Advanced Report Builder subscriptions, or to order report writing services, please contact your Daptiv Account Manager via acctmgmt@daptiv.com or 1-888-621-8361.

Thank you for your attention to this transition.

Daptiv PPM Winter '09 is LIVE!

2008-11-10T23:13:00Z

Daptiv is pleased to announce the release of Daptiv PPM Summer '09

Daptiv PPM Winter '09 extends use of the leading On-demand PPM solution to multiple languages, browsers and platforms, giving users more choices than ever to use the system in the ways they want.

Daptiv PPM localized in French, German & Spanish

With the launch of Winter ‘09, users can now use PPM in French, German & Spanish as well as in English. Using the individual language/culture setting, team members experience the software in their language, while collaborating with other members of the enterprise. Note: Daptiv’s corporate website, daptiv.com is now localized too, for the convenience of its international customers and prospects.

Now Supporting FireFox and Mac

Besides the new languages, Daptiv PPM Winter ‘09 also provides new browser and platform alternatives for users. Daptiv PPM now supports FireFox 3.0 (Internet Explorer & Macintosh), opening up another browser choice for individuals and enterprises.

More for Managers: Next-Generation Gantt Chart

Daptiv PPM’s next generation Gantt Chart (BETA) is packed with enhancements to make it easier to manage tasks and projects. It’s faster, has more filters, and lets users add more tasks. It also zooms to fit the portion of the schedule users want to see, lets users create multiple dependency types by clicking-and-dragging, and more. The new Gantt chart saves users time by letting them create their project schedules directly in a browser without using external project tools.

Another time-saver for managers: enhancements to Team Manager lets Project Managers and (and Resource Managers) request (and approve) individual resources rather than just resource types.

More for Administrators

- Changes to Billing Rates history will improve accuracy of historical calculations and reporting.

- Updates to the ProjectTransit client improve the usability of this utility for integrating with Microsoft Project.

- Daptiv Outlook Integration now auto-updates when a new client is available – no more manual upgrades needed.

More for Team Members

Daptiv PPM Winter ‘09 gives users control to receive notifications when and how they want them, including:

- Setting up consolidated “digest” notifications that can be grouped by project or application, and sent to the user weekly or daily during a specified time period

- Suspending notifications (e.g. for vacations, out-of-office, etc.)

- Changing notification format between HTML and text

- Setting notification preferences by Daptiv PPM application (e.g. one set of preferences for Tasks but another for Issues)

- Updating all notification settings from a single location.

Daptiv PPM Winter ‘09 introduces a new Help system to give team members better, easier access to help topics and an improved search engine for getting their answers faster.

If a lot of these features sound familiar, it might be because several popular Greenhouse features are represented here -- around 2,000 "points" worth. Thanks for your input in the Greenhouse, and enjoy Winter '09!

Good Luck Tom & Addie!

2008-08-19T21:08:00Z

We're very proud of the team over at Chase Paymentech including Tom Bannon and Addie Monson. Chase is doing some very smart things with Daptiv in their organization, and they're now nominated for an award!

Chase is a finalist in the Computerworld Best Practices in Business Intelligence competition in the Innovation and Promise in Business Intelligence category.

Winner will be announced at Computerworld's Business Intelligence Perspectives Conference, being held at the Arizona Biltmore Resort & Spa, in Phoenix, AZ September 8-10.Congratulations, and good luck. Please let us know if you win.

Speed--the Value of Fast Value

2008-07-30T21:04:00Z

We recently shared some metrics we've been tracking for the past 3 quarters on how much time it takes our new customers to go from 'subcribe to live'. Phil Wainewright, the well-known pundit on all things SaaS at ZDNET covered the news his blog this week. Here's some additional background on why our tracking of this set of metrics is important to us. The post also features our new customer, InterContinental Hotels Group, who discuss their use of Daptiv PPM to manage new hotel openings. Thanks, IHG!

What is Daptiv Subscribe to Live?

Subscribe to Live is Daptiv’s methodology for helping customers rapidly create value and realize a return on their investment through rapid and streamlined configuration, training and implementation.

Why is it called Subscribe-to-Live?

Subscribe to Live (or Daptiv ‘S2L’) is exactly that. It’s a measure of the number of business day’s between when the customer signs their subscription agreement with us, and the day that their solution is configured and being used by their user community to manage their day to day business.

Can you provide more background on the numbers in the press release?

We looked at customers that began their subscription and went live during the past three quarters of our operations—Q4 2007, and the first 2 quarters of 2008 ending June 30. During this period we implemented more than 200 organizations, the largest user community to go live during this time period was 1003 users, and the smallest was 11 users. The actual average subscribe to live metric is 29.81 days.

Why is Subscribe-to-Live important?

Business software is evolving rapidly. The advent of web 2.0 technologies and the software as a service business model have enabled vendors like Daptiv to throw out the old way of buying and delivering software. In the process, we are driving faster time to value and real benefits to customers which is what S2L is all about. It’s important to note as well that we’re not offering a consumer web tool or a simple product for social network or collaboration although those are elements of our offering. We are helping organizations manage diverse and complex business processes, and they are taking advantage of the flexibility and configurability of our platform to achieve this speed.

Isn’t Rapid Return on Investment Common to All Cloud Computing?

Not necessarily. Business applications delivered in the SaaS model still require you to think about and implement features and tools that support and map to your business process. Not all cloud computing vendors provide the same level of flexibility and configurability. A key enabler of our fast time to value is the flexibility and rapid configuration tools built into the Daptiv SaaS offerings.

How much is this costing Daptiv customer?

Our typical customer spends approximately 25% of their first year subscription contract price on professional services for configuration, coaching, training and education. So if you are paying $100,000 for an annual subscription, you would spend approximately $25,000 to get up and running in less than 30 days, your people would be trained, the software would be configured to your business process needs, and you would be prepared enhance and modify your environment going forward.

Our S2L approach is heavily focused on coaching so that we leave knowledge and power behind when our consultants leave.

Daptiv PPM Spring ’08 is LIVE

2008-04-23T23:47:00Z

Daptiv PPM Spring ’08 went live April 12, bringing together several enhancements to help you make Daptiv the single source of truth for your Mid-Office.

There are features in Spring '08 to make it easier to get data out of Daptiv PPM (Recurring Report Scheduling, Export Custom Views to Excel/PDF, Web Services) features to make it easier to get data into the system (Import Projects, Web Services), and several user experience enhancements (Remember My Settings, Capacity Planner Performance) – since good user experience leads to more adoption, more data & even more visibility for your business. We’ve also rolled out some features to give easy access to information about your Daptiv PPM service (What’s New, Inline System Status Notices). This release is a natural follow-up to our Fall ’07 release, in which we joined its rich native PPM data capture, custom views and custom data with browser-based reporting and dashboarding tools to create Work Intelligence™ -- giving companies complete visibility into the managed work in their enterprise.

Thanks for your support and enjoy Daptiv PPM Spring ’08.

Links:

Spring ’08 Web Page

About Daptiv PPM Spring ’08 (Documentation)

Spring ’08 Data Sheet

Daptiv YouCon 08

2008-01-26T01:38:00Z

Well, I'm back in Seattle (oddly the sunniest place this week between San Diego, San Francisco and here...). But we had a phenomenal experience with our customers and the other attendees at YouCon '08.

First a couple of informal "awards"

Best use of props in a presentation Award -- Tom Bannon and his team from Chase Paymentech (who would've known that hardhats could do all that?)

Longest Trip Award -- Charl Morkel from Blue Nova, a Daptiv implementation and consulting partner from Australia.

Biggest Secret But Not A Secret Award -- Daptiv Connect, our new Integration Service

We really wanted to accomplish 3 things with YouCon this year:

Provide an opportunity for our customers to network and share ideas
Interact ourselves with people in our customer community from around the world
Share our plans and vision, and solicit feedback on how we can do better

I think we accomplished all three. For those of you who couldn't be there here's a quick summary of the announcements we made, and a little bit about what it was like:

Daptiv's Year in Review for 2007-- Jeff Pancottine opened the event, and talked about our our business performance and key investment areas for last year. In a nutshell: in 2007 we have more customers, higher bookings, higher revenues, and we made significant investments in world class infrastructure to deliver our on-demand solutions.

Our Vision for Collaborative Business Apps and Managing Work in the Enterprise was shared by Christian Smith. He discussed many strategies and themes we've developed over the past several months that are driving our product release plans including our recognition that combining the structure of project management and the freedom and agility of good collaboration tools makes a more compelling whole than either apart. He also shared the vision we have for helping our customers manage their WORK which of course will include projects, but also many activities that might not fit that formal definition. Another key theme discussed by Christian was the importance of visibility and how our vision for work intelligence is part of that objective of better managing work for business results. Those of you who have already dived into using the Work Intelligence capabilities in our Fall Edition 07 service are probably starting to figure that out.

Daptiv Product Roadmap -- was shared by Eric Bergman from Daptiv, and highlighted things such as our plans for delivering Daptiv PPM in new languages in 2008, where we're taking our services in the future to offer more flexibility, new capabilities for creating more collaborative business applications, and also how we're changing and enhancing the experience around certain core features of our PPM service in the next year.

Introducing...The Daptiv Greenhouse! -- Nicole Shaw, a solution designer at Daptiv, introduced the Greenhouse. The Daptiv Greenhouse is part of this community site, and is our new forum and tool for gathering innovative ideas and product suggestions from our community. The Greenhouse is part of our commitment to collaborating with you on what we bring to market, and will provide you with visibility into what your peers think, and how we plan to respond in terms of new product releases. The Greenhouse will be in beta for the next two months, and we invited our YouCon attendees to join. We will share more information around this with everyone after our beta period.

Daptiv Connect -- in San Diego at YouCon we introduced our new innovation service called Daptiv Connect. Chris Broyles, our VP of professional services along with Greg Moerbe from Pervasive Software with whom we've partnered to create and deliver Daptiv Connect, explained the link between visibility into information and the various approaches to bringing that data into your environment. A challenge for always, our new Daptiv Connect service provides a simpler, more maintable way to think about integration, and promises to bring real benefits when combined with the Work Intelligence features for dashboarding, analysis and reporting that we introduced with the Fall Edition of Daptiv PPM. Daptiv Connect promises an approach to integrating both SaaS to SaaS and SaaS to on-premise systems that is maintable and flexible compared with brittle custom integration approaches. Look for more information on Daptiv Connect in the days to come. It is available today and we demonstrated our first packaged integration between Daptiv PPM and Salesforce.com.

Anthony Williams, Co-Author of the zeitgeist book of 2007, Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything, opened the second day of YouCon with a keynote address to our attendees. Anthony's mix of examples from durable goods companies, consumer products companies, financial companies and the technology sector along with his demographic research findings on the way the next generation of workers is wired were revelatory for our attendees and we got a hugely positive response to his talk.

I must say that a real highlight of YouCon this year was the customer showcases presented by Darlene Fladager from MIT, David Ludwig from Dell Financial Services, and Tom Bannon, Tony Gamboa and Addie Monson from Chase Paymentech. There's nothing like hearing it from people who use our service everyday to manage their business, and each of these way really interesting in ways as different as their organizations. My thanks to each of them, it is quite striking and really rewarding to see our service adapted and focused on these real world challenges in business and in academia. The other attendees were rapt in each of these presentations.

So there it is for those of you who couldn't join us. Hope to see you next time...

Daptiv Customers and Partners Expected at YouCon '08 Next Week

2008-01-18T21:39:00Z

Daptiv's user conference, YouCon '08 is happening next week in San Diego at the Paradise Point Resort & Spa. We're looking forward to seeing all of you there! Anthony Williams, Author of Wikinomics will keynote on Wednesday morning, and we'll be making some new service announcements as well as hearing about the future of Daptiv and a year in review from CEO Jeff Pancottine. I'll post some updates from YouCon next week while we're there.

Whitehouse Gets with the SaaS Program

2008-01-18T21:33:00Z

I read this yesterday, and think it represents a major tipping point for SaaS companies (including Daptiv). Karen Evans, administrator of the OMB's Office of Electronic Government and Information Technology, endorsed software as a service. Read the story

The Scoop on Our New Name...

2007-11-07T22:51:00Z

Jeff Pancottine, President & CEO, Discusses the Evolution of eProject to Daptiv

I recently spent a few minutes with Jeff to talk about the choice to change our name from eProject to Daptiv, and what it means for us as a company as well as to our customers. Here’s an excerpt of our conversation:

Tim: Why are you changing your company name from eProject to Daptiv?

Jeff: We wanted a name that was somewhat less specific than eProject—one that would allow us to continue to provide the world’s leading on-demand project portfolio management software, while also giving us more flexibility to introduce new services in the future. We also felt that the timing was right. We’ve had a phenomenal couple of years from a growth standpoint, and these things only get more difficult the bigger you become.

Tim: What does Daptiv mean?

Jeff: Well, as I mentioned we were looking for a name that was less specific, and that would be flexible as we grow our business. I think Daptiv evokes some things, but it’s not intended to “mean” anything. You’ll notice that even the typography of our new brand identity is a little bit casual, a little bit playful. We wanted an iconic brand, but also one that was approachable, and didn’t seem stodgy. I would be happy to hear from our customers, both old and new. Feel free to share with me what the name Daptiv has come to mean to you and your organization.

Tim: Does this mean that you are still innovating in the project portfolio management market?

Jeff: Yes, absolutely. We see projects and teams and portfolios as critical components to successfully manage work in the mid-office. We will continue to focus on delivering the best on-demand PPM software.

Tim: You mentioned the ‘mid-office’. Tell me more about that.

Jeff: Organizations have spent the past 20 years adding sophisticated technology to their business to manage transactions and reporting for back office financials and inventory, etc. and more recently, for customer interactions and transactions through CRM tools like Salesforce.com. The work that happens in an organization that’s not front office or back office, is what we call the MID OFFICE, and it’s where organizations’ competitive strengths lie. We think there’s enormous potential for organization to approach the teamwork and strategic initiatives, and yes, ‘projects’ in their business with a similar set of enterprise tools that also provide visibility via reporting, dashboards, quick and easy custom views and the like. So whether this is an IT portfolio, or a new product development and go to market process, or whether it’s planning for an acquisition, we think software can do more for organizations in the mid-office.

Tim: Is the company’s ownership changing?

Jeff: No, we continue to be a privately held company based in Seattle, and our new brand is a way for us to articulate a richer value-based story that includes project and portfolio management, but also goes beyond it to embody the idea of managing not just projects, but work.

Tim: What is Daptiv doing beyond PPM?

Jeff: Event in our current PPM service, Daptiv PPM, you can see that our set of tools provides not just project portfolio management applications, and things like resource management, which are core elements of the PPM software market; it also touches on the interconnected requirements of really managing work—things like integral collaboration services, the ability to create ‘DIY’ or do-it-yourself applications that actually map to business processes and needs that you have—which are perhaps adjacent to the core project portfolio management elements, but also relate to managing work in the enterprise.

Tim: What do you think makes Daptiv different from other PPM software vendors, and more broadly from other tools people use to manage their day to day work?

Jeff: We have a mantra at Daptiv—it’s 4 words--YOU-WORK-EASY-ON-DEMAND. These really embody how we are driving our business, and how we are offering value to our customers in helping them address the real business management challenges they face.

You—is important because we see business software changing and evolving. 10 years ago, it was ok to design software with a bad UI because with back office applications, there were relatively few users interacting regularly with the system. Today--and especially since we focus on managing work—we have thousands of individuals interacting with our software every hour. This means that we need to think about how it feels to you. Whether you are a C-level executive just logging in for a dashboard snapshot, or whether you are a team member on a new product development project, we believe that the software should allow you to make the choice about how you view it, how you interact with your data, and be flexible enough to accommodate that.

Work—represents the evolution of our focus on projects. We’ve come to understand that while organizations definitely want better tools to manage “projects”, they also really need better tools to manage work that might not be structured as a project. Our mission is not to make everyone into a project manager, it’s to help our customers better manage their work so that they can compete effectively. The mid-office has been largely relegated to the use of personal productivity tools—and these are great for the work you do alone. But the huge opportunity for organizations is to link personal and organizational productivity, and this can only happen with an integrated environment where tools for your own heads-down work come together with the bigger objectives your organization is trying to meet. This is where our new capabilities for Work Intelligence really shine. Not only does Daptiv give your teams tools to manage day to day work, but it now provides you with an easy way to report on share and visualize data to help understand what’s actually happening with the strategic work in your organization.

Easy—this is closely related to our focus on you. It has become more important to make software easy and here’s why—it’s nice for the end user, and it helps them do their job better. BUT, it has a bigger impact. If our tools are easy to use, it means that our customers will have users actively contributing data to the environment. This participation and contribution is what drives visibility into the work that’s happening in an organization, and ultimately allows managers to make much smarter decisions because they have better data. It’s a two-fold payoff.

On-demand—this is perhaps the biggest change in the business software arena in the past decade. The growing ubiquity of internet access means that organizations are no longer need to depend solely on their own IT departments. They can now rent services for a duration that makes sense to their business, and the vendor (us!) handles uptime, hardware, maintenance, networking, access, etc. All of these services are part of our delivery model, and you as a customer do not have to worry about it. With on-premise software, you have to procure hardware, install software, update software, update servers, re-start servers and monitor the operating environment. This takes employees, often several people, and of course you have to pay their salaries and benefits. You also have to pay for power to run these systems and cool these systems. Increasingly, savvy organizations are realizing that on-demand business software makes sense. With software as a service (SaaS) you focus on your business process and their unique competitive differentiators, and leave the mundane aspects of service delivery to us. You always have the latest and greatest features, and all you need to do is pay a monthly subscription and have a browser to access the service.

Tim: Thanks, Jeff. Let’s do this again real soon!