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Introducing Daptiv Digest – Daptiv’s first quarterly newsletter. Each quarter, the newsletter will keep you in the loop about what’s new with Daptiv and offer valuable resources – anything and everything from podcasts demos and product news to customer/partner stories and ways to engage with the Daptiv community. We’d like your feedback on this first issue so be sure to fill out our newsletter feedback survey.
Get Visibility with Work Intelligence™
As you probably know, in Fall ’07 Daptiv 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. If you’re customer who hasn’t yet signed up for the new reporting licenses, contact your Daptiv Account Manager.
Daptiv PPM Spring ’08: Your Single Source of Truth in the Mid-Office
With the upcoming launch of Daptiv PPM Spring ’08, Daptiv rolls out enhancements for all user types designed to make Daptiv your single source of truth for the Mid-Office. Learn more about what’s new for Executives, Managers, Administrators and Team Members in Spring ’08. Daptiv gives PPM users seasonal updates so customers always have access to the latest features and functionality.
See What’s Coming Soon in Daptiv PPM Spring ’08
Read CIO Magazine's White Paper: "Why the Mid-Office Matters"
Conversation with Charl Morkel, Director at Blue Nova:
1.Tell us about your company, and your role at Blue Nova
Blue Nova is the Australian sales and implementation partner for Daptiv. We deliver project portfolio management capability to our customers through a holistic approach that focuses on people, process and technology. Daptiv forms the crucial technology component.
2.What sparked Blue Nova’s interest in working with Daptiv? What has that experience been like?
We saw two clears business trends: PPM and SaaS (on-demand). Daptiv lay in their focal point. We have been working with Daptiv for over two years and we are very happy that we made the decision to just focus on selling Daptiv over competing products. Daptiv has proven itself to have the clearest vision for PPM and business applications. Most importantly, they listen to partners and customers and respond rapidly.
3.In working with your clients, what business needs are they facing today, specific to collaboration and managing their mid-office workflow?
Organisations tend to let collaboration and mid-office workflow occur ad-hoc because they don’t have any frame of reference for doing it better. Daptiv’s toolset provides the platform to be the clear system of record for this mid-office work. However, the challenge is convincing organisations that there is tangible value to be harvested here.
4.How do you think on-demand software is changing the way people do business world-wide?
Australia is always a couple of years behind the U.S. in terms of adoption but on-demand software is clearly the future. For larger companies, the challenge has been to break the traditionalist hold on the old software model that is client/server. For mid-size companies, Australians tend to have a bit of a laid-back attitude and don’t like change too much so Daptiv’s biggest competitor isn’t one of the traditionalists or the other on-demand players who lag behind; it’s ‘do-nothing’. But, in the past 6 months we have seen a clear mandates in all business sizes as they get a better appreciation of its true value in terms of lowering cost, risk, time and getting to positive ROI quicker.
5. How do you think Daptiv PPM is different?
Daptiv has all the elements to go way beyond just PPM. Its dynamic applications are great but they can do so much more. The Daptiv product team has responded to that and the platform capability that they presented at the recent User Conference (YouCon08) just proves how Daptiv is staying ahead of the rest.
6.How do you think Daptiv as a company is different?
There’s a reason why Daptiv has won ‘Best Company to Work For’ so many years in a row. Having met a great deal of the staff at YouCon08 I can see that this work is calling for them. The enthusiasm was contagious and I have always found Daptiv staff to be exceptionally professional.
Daptiv’s DeskDocs, introduced in PPM6 Summer ’07 Edition, gives you a Windows Explorer view of all the documents in all the projects you have permissions for, making online document management simpler than ever. Here are just a few of the ways you can now use DeskDocs:
1. Install DeskDocs from anywhere:
a. from a Project (Project Menu > Documents)b. from the Documents Tab
c. from the Utilities Download Page (get there by clicking on your UserName and selecting “Download Utilities”)
2. Uploading multiple docs? Definitely use DeskDocs for this purpose. Move them all with one click and drag; save the extra clicks. Avoid Carpal Tunnel.
3. Have Document folders in PPM6 that you’re always adding to, or updating? Save yourself time and make a Shortcut on your desktop straight to that folder (right-click in DeskDocs on the folder you need, and save the Shortcut to your desktop.)
4. Use DeskDocs to get a team to really use a central documents repository. If you make it easy, people will do it.
a. Have a DeskDocs shortcut(s) created on the desktops of each person in a project teamb. Tell them to drag all the project docs into this folder
c. Every team member can do that
d. New project? New shortcuts
e. When teams share and collaborate, project ROI improves.
5. Save directly from Word, Excel, Acrobat, etc. without even going back to your desktop. For example in Microsoft Word, you can go to File > Save As > DeskDocs and navigate to the exact Daptiv folder where you want to save your Word doc. Now, how cool is that?
6. Share anything. Remember, you’re not limited to Office documents (e.g. Word, Excel, PPT). Some businesses need to share diagrams, pictures, movie files, any types of files. Share ‘em all, we say – the cool stuff and the boring stuff. Take advantage of the now-expanded storage in PPM6.
7. Move entire document folder structures. For example, know you’re working on a project that will require deep folder hierarchies? Create them on your desktop, and transfer them over as a set.
8. Configure as needed. You can configure DeskDocs manually for other operating systems like Vista (see PPM6 Help). Or, to trigger notification emails for each document created in DeskDocs, you can change the project or enterprise settings.
9. Deep-Six that document management system you’re currently paying money for, and make eProject PPM6 your official system of record for collaborative documents.
10. Find your own creative uses for DeskDocs – we created this flexible tool for you. Let us know what you do with DeskDocs.
Thanks For Attending YouCon08!
YouCon '08 was a great success! Thank you to all of our customers, prospects and partners who joined us this year - we hope you enjoyed YouCon '08 as much as we did. We hope if you were there that it was everything you hoped it would be, and if you weren't able to join us this time, we look forward to having you with us at the next gathering of our user community.
Highlights from YouCon '08:
Introduced Daptiv Connect
Introduced Daptiv Greenhouse (YouCon attendees are all part of the beta)
Visionary presentation on the Future of Mass Collaboration from Anthony Williams, co-author of Wikinomics
Awesome Customer showcase presentations from Darlene Fladager from MIT, David Ludwig from Dell Financial Services, and Tom Bannon, Tony Gamboa, and Addie Monson from Chase Paymentech
YouCon08 Customer Quotes
"It was definitely worth coming to YouCon. I planned to come for three reasons: networking, to gather some good ideas as to how other companies are using Daptiv and to really understand the company roadmap. I was able to do all three. I really enjoyed hearing both the CEO and CIO talk about using wikis. I never used them before, but it's probably something we will start exploring. An unintended benefit to attending the conference is that I was able to see how Daptiv is trying to serve its customers using technology to find out what their customers want. We can translate this back to our organization at Grange to keep up with the changing demographic of our workforce. Also, the training on reporting is very timely for our Work Intelligence implementation."
"The conference has been great. There are so many different deployment methods for different sized organizations - that was really interesting to see. It was good to see that there were so many sessions where Daptiv was asking us questions, too."
"I have learned so much about how people are using the Daptiv tool, including capabilities that I didn't even know it had. I got to meet my account rep and he said, 'for Daptiv, it's not enough that you like the product - we want you to be successful using it.' I can't wait for the training session tomorrow."
"For me, attending YouCon put Daptiv into a more global context and drove home the point that it is more about work, process and flow than just project management software. I was able to network with other customers and share both challenges and positive experiences as well as get feedback on training ideas. At YouCon I was able to see that there is a community and I'm not alone. As for the keynote speaker Anthony Williams, the co-author of Wikinomics, I love his book. He is really documenting a global change in work and life and his theories can be applied to a lot of areas, including maximizing business. I used to think Facebook and those types of technologies as silly, but now I understand how they impact the youth trend coming into the workplace."
Robin Sherwood, Group Product Manager
Originally from Portland Oregon, I moved to Seattle to attend the University of Washington. I graduated with a degree in Anthropology. My early career was spent developing many first generation corporate websites for companies such as Safeway, Windermere, Microsoft, FTD, McDonalds and FedEx. I spent some time in the advertising industry working on interactive sites for Visio and Nestle. After a while I got the start-up bug and gave up my comfy Herman-Miller appointed office for a ride in a true garage startup that ultimately led to 8 months living in Tokyo working on a web-based application framework for Nikkei and NTT. It was very similar to what we are doing with our DA 2.0 initiative but this was in 2001. I spent a short time in the mobile content industry as a product/marketing manager for videogames and ringtone products working with clients such as Rolling Stone and ESPN.
I have been at Daptiv for almost 3 years and I can easily say it is the best place I have ever worked (even though the ramen was better in Tokyo). There is just a great culture here at Daptiv and we have so much potential with our product. I’m always impressed on how people work together even when we have differences of opinion. I’ve never seen an office with a greater commitment to work life balance.
For the past 7 years I have been training and competing in various triathlons from the local sprints to Ironman. I enjoy heading out the door at lunch with my co-workers for a run and many people bike to work. The culture at Daptiv not only enables the time to train for these types of events but actually encourages people to live active lives.
Daptiv Digest Survey: What do you think?
Whew. We managed to launch our first Daptiv newsletter and now we’d love to read your feedback! Take this quick survey to tell us what you like, what you don’t like and what we should talk about in the next issue.