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Daptiv Digest is Daptiv’s 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.
This latest edition of our leading on-demand PPM software brings together several enhancements to help you make Daptiv the single source of truth for your Mid-Office. There are features to make it easier to get data out of Daptiv PPM, features to make it easier to get data into the system, and several user experience enhancements – since good user experience leads to more adoption, more data & even more visibility for your business.
New in Spring ’08:
- Schedule recurring reports
- Import Projects from .xls and .csv
- Individual culture settings
- “What’s New” link inside Daptiv PPM
- Inline system notifications
- Export data from most custom views to Excel/PDF
- Remember my Settings
- Capacity Planner performance improvements
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.
For more information on the benefits of Daptiv PPM Spring ’08, see the Spring ’08 Web Page.
If you are a Daptiv PPM users and want to get user training or documentation on the new features, just click on “What’s New” anytime you’re logged into Daptiv PPM. Enjoy…
International Partners Providing Daptiv Solution to Customers in New Markets Including Australia, the U.K., South Africa, Mexico and Canada
Seattle, Wash. — March 17, 2008 — Daptiv, the on-demand leader in collaborative business software, today announced that it has launched its Global Partner Program to deliver on-demand collaborative project portfolio management solutions to enterprises around the world. As part of the Daptiv Solution Partner Program, partners help customers manage team-based, collaborative work.
International Daptiv partners such as Bluenova of Australia, Performance Advantage and Innovations in Business of Canada, IMR of Mexico, The PMO Company of the Netherlands, SilverLake Professionals of South Africa and BlackApple and PI Consulting of the United Kingdom, in addition to U.S. partners such as Triple I and Effective IT, have identified Daptiv as a leader in project management and collaboration software and are committed to incorporating Daptiv technology into their product and service offerings. Daptiv offers three types of solution partnerships to fit the needs of systems integrators, resellers and consulting firms, and provides access to training, sales leads, revenue sharing, as well as the Daptiv platform itself, to bring substantial value to partner offerings. With the recent introduction of Daptiv Connect, resellers and partners benefit from the added value of a being able to easily integrate Daptiv technology with other on-premise or Web-based enterprise solutions, such as Salesforce.com.
Virgin Blue Airlines of Australia recently chose Bluenova to implement Daptiv PPM across Virgin Blue's commercial, corporate, operations and special project portfolios. "Virgin Blue Airlines is a highly innovative organization that has been growing at a steady rate," said Charl Morkel, director, Bluenova. "They were looking for a program that was highly flexible to meet the expanding needs as well as being able to adapt to the differing project management maturity levels across the organization. Daptiv PPM was the obvious choice."
"Daptiv is an ideal partner for IMR’s results-based methodology, which requires quick, demonstrable return-on-investment for customers in markets such as retail and management," said Raul Cardenas, director of operations, IMR. "Other solutions require time-consuming installations for on-site software, but Daptiv’s SaaS-based platform makes it easy to get our customers up and running quickly without worrying about software upgrades or hardware requirements. Best of all, our customers immediately see value as they gain visibility into the work they are doing across staff roles, from executives to team members."
IMR has already implemented Daptiv PPM with roughly twenty clients and works with companies ranging in size from less than $10 million to more than $300 million in revenue. Daptiv’s on-demand solution has provided IMR customers with greater visibility into work processes and collaboration, reduction of project costs and time, and overall improved project success.
"Daptiv has radically increased the volume of project work that we can take on and has enhanced the quality of service that we provide to our clients," said Ian Brown, managing director of BlackApple. "After conducting thorough research on various project management and collaboration solutions, we concluded that Daptiv is the only tool that allows us and our clients to quickly focus in on business critical needs and projects across an organization. Daptiv is invaluable in providing a single version of the truth, one centralized repository that allows for visibility into all aspects of the project and ensures that all data is taken into account for a holistic view of work."
BlackApple is a project management and consulting company and is one the longest serving partners anywhere, having been both a customer and partner of Daptiv since 2001. Initially, BlackApple used Daptiv in a professional services capacity, relying on Daptiv’s solution when managing or rescuing a project for a client. Their clients gained exposure to Daptiv PPM through BlackApple, and soon turned to BlackApple for assistance in implementing the product internally in order to better manage all facets of project work. Today, BlackApple continues to use Daptiv for their professional services offering, and also serves as a direct sales partner and a key training and implementation partner, providing European facing support and configuration expertise. BlackApple has over 50 clients worldwide, with roughly 40 clients in the UK and several more in countries like India, Pakistan, Switzerland and Germany, ranging from small design agencies to one of the largest food retailers in the world.
"These partnerships are a testament to Daptiv’s tremendous growth, both internationally and within the U.S.," said Jeff Pancottine, CEO of Daptiv. "As we continue to grow and expand the reach of our solution to new verticals and markets, we’re enabling enterprises to gain insight into all work across projects and teams and to tap into the robust reporting of Work Intelligence. As companies across the globe continue to embrace and adopt emerging enterprise 2.0 technologies, Daptiv is committed to partnering with well-established, customer-centric firms to best serve these new markets."
Conversation with Perry Puccetti, President and CEO of Triple-I:
Triple-I has been a Daptiv partner since 2007 and is based out of Overland Park, Kansas. Triple-I has been providing highly-tailored business and technology solutions for clients striving to simplify and improve organizational performance.
1. What types of IT organizations does Triple-I work with?
For 37 years, Triple-I has served many different clients and a wide variety of IT organizations; airline reservation systems, network switching systems, process automation, ERP, homeland security, helpdesk and PC support, and IT support for the delivery and management of knowledge based systems. Our focus is not so much on a particular industry or vertical as it is on solving a client’s particular challenge by providing solutions that are either people-based, process-based, leverage the capabilities of our strategic partners like Daptiv, or, some combination of all three. If you ask a client (and we do!) “is your life getting any easier on a day-to-day basis”, what you generally receive is laughter followed by “no” and an explanation why.
We help our clients reduce this “operational complexity” by providing solutions that are tailored to their specific needs, that leverage our core capabilities, and provide value to the client. The ability to help our clients operate more efficiently and effectively through better defined processes, projects that deliver expected results, collaboration, or through improved visibility into their day-to-day operations is of great value to business leaders who are constantly seeking ways to generate higher ROI, greater operational efficiencies, better cash flow, finish projects on time, or make intelligent decisions.
In many ways this is why we find Daptiv to be such a good strategic partner; we both focus on success – the client’s.
2. What types of people does Triple-I look to hire to serve the needs of clients?
As a company, our Core Purpose is to “provide results that matter to our clients, our associates, and Triple-I”. The first of our Core Values is “to have integrity in everything that we do”. In addition, I am a big Jim Collins fan, so, “getting the right person on the bus and in the right seat” is something that I firmly believe in. As a professional services firm, our people are our business; they must absolutely embrace our core purpose, demonstrate integrity, be able to build and maintain relationships, and, have top-notch skill sets in areas such as; project management, business process management (BPM), architecture, and expertise in a variety of software development disciplines. For example, most of our project managers possess PMP certifications, have been through the Department of Defense DSMC-SPM (Defense Systems Management College – School for Program Managers) program, or possess Masters degrees from universities like Johns Hopkins. We have BPM expertise and certifications in CMMI, ITIL, and Six Sigma, and an in-house software development capability with expertise in areas such as .NET, JAVA, and others.
We view ourselves as “small but premium” – relatively small in total number of associates but providers of premium value to our clients.
In short, our history and our success is built upon a foundation of trust – those are the people that we hire, and those are the people our clients deserve.
3. What has been Triple-I’s experience with previous waves of PPM software?
Over the years, we have seen many different types of software, many claiming ease of use, implementation, or of value to the user. In fact what we have seen in many cases is just the opposite. Very complex applications with steep learning curves, lengthy configuration / implementation periods, limited if any customization capability, developed more for organizations with clearly defined, mature processes such as engineering or construction, provided no collaborative opportunities and are overkill for most organizations – how many organizations have the luxury of having enough project managers for every project? The business reality is, that in many instances, the people leading and managing projects have little or no formal training in project management – further complicating the use, institutionalization, and ultimately the value of any PPM application. Yet, the business still must achieve its objectives, delivery its products and services, and provide efficient and effective operations to its employees.
Most business are in the business of “doing” and have neither the time nor the budget to wait until an application is ready for use, people have been trained to use the application, or possibly the most damaging – the organization ends up supporting the application rather than the application supporting the organization.
4. How is Daptiv PPM different?
Daptiv addresses many of these challenges through ease of use, ease of implementation and the ability to customize according to the organization’s needs. The configuration / implementation process typically is in days versus months depending on client involvement, learning curve is reduced based on each individual’s involvement in the project thereby accelerating adoption and institutionalization of the application, and value provided to the organization by driving project management consistency. The extensive customization capabilities are valuable for all organizations regardless of whether they have a mature process or not as this enables the organization to adapt the application to the organization’s needs versus having to force the organization to adapt to the limitations of the application. The collaborative aspects of Daptiv are a significant capability from a knowledge management/sharing standpoint – think of the value that can be gained through ACTIVE sharing and use of lessons learned, project collateral, and the ability to solicit input from other project managers. Daptiv’s ability to take a phased approach toward implementation and use can also support an organization’s change management plan – adoption at the speed of the business. From a functionality standpoint, Daptiv has a phenomenal feature set and the ability to customize that feature set is almost limitless – and with a SaaS model. Daptiv is an application geared to the business.
5. Are there any common themes / needs over the years that come up with customers?
The ability/need to get things done!
Over time there will always be different methodologies, tools, etc., but at the end of the day, a company’s ability to achieve its strategic objectives is absolutely key – in my role as CEO, this is where I try to maintain my focus.
A company’s ability to achieve its strategic objectives is tied to how well it selects, prioritizes, and executes its projects; Project and Portfolio Management – PPM. The more aligned a company’s projects are to its strategic objectives, the more likely it is to achieving them as each project moves them closer to success – the opposite is also true.
Our ability as a team to help our clients achieve their objectives is what they want, and they reward us with their business!
With the new power of Daptiv Work Intelligence™, consider the possibilities you now have to create new reports and perform analysis within Daptiv. Many users have asked how to capture or put more information into Dynamic Applications (DAs) to to feed views, reports and dashboards. In many cases, the information is already captured in Daptiv PPM. By shifting your paradigms you can harvest and analyze this information by using Daptiv’s Advanced Report Builder.
For example, Task work and task cost details are in the solution, you may just have to whiteboard what you are trying to accomplish and use the power of the Daptiv Advanced Report Builder to accomplish your goal. Here is the process you can follow:
- Whiteboard your data input, the processes you want the data to go through, and then your data output.
- Next, work backwards and be sure the data you want out is actually in the solution. If not, you may have to add custom fields or aggregate information from applications by using the aggregated custom field.
- If the output data is not in the form you desire, you may have to transform it in Daptiv or transform it when you run your report.
- Design your report format on the whiteboard or prototype it using MS Visio, MS Excel, or MS Word.
- Create your report.
Status reports that are currently taking hours per project per week can be just a click away, or can be scheduled to run when you need them to. When Daptiv PPM Administrators put their minds to work, Work Intelligence™ can provide immediate return and a TON of information and decision support.
Daptiv held the first global partner training from March 31 - April 4 and it was a huge success. The focus of the boot camp was on getting sales people and SE’s ready to demonstrate the product.
They began with completing our iConfigure program remote during the week prior, then they spend a week in our offices. This was a combined program with AE's and Resellers. We had a total of 11 people. It included resellers from ACIC (AmeriCzech) and IMR (in Mexico). ACIC is a brand new reseller for us and is based on Prague. IMR has offices in 3 cities in Mexico.
The week concluded with mock demonstrations including a presentation about our company.
Highlights included: Jazz with Dave Anderson (Daptiv’s Sr. Product Marketing Manager) Thursday night, Matt bought a guitar and Maurice Mosely, Daptiv Account Manager, took them shopping all over Seattle.
We didn’t take photos but plan to next time! Our next boot camp is planned to occur in another couple of months.
Robyn Baron, Major Account Executive
I like to say I am from Washington State, but I didn’t grow up here. My parents are both from Washington, but my dad was in the Air Force, so I am an Air Force Brat who got to live all over the world growing up. I graduated with a degree in Psychology from Wofford College, in Spartanburg, SC. I started my selling career in retail and worked for Ann Taylor and Nordstrom after college. If you ask my friends and family, I have been selling the things I like since I was little! My first real sales job was at Nextel Communications where I was a part of an amazing team that launched the Seattle market and sold to local businesses like Amazon.com.
I have been at Daptiv over 6 years now, and I have been in the sales department longer than anyone besides our VP of Sales. I currently am focused on larger organizations in the Northeast and have been doing more travel than ever before. I love having the chance to finally meet some of my customers in person! Daptiv has been an incredible place to work and our team is exceptional. I can’t imagine being anywhere else – the company is growing so rapidly, and our solution just keeps getting better and better.
When I am not working, you will find me with my family. I have been married for a little over 6 years and I have a four year old daughter and a 2 year old son who are my pride and joy! On the weekends I am usually at a birthday party, the park or the zoo, or more often than not, trying to keep them entertained on a rainy day! I am also forcing myself to like running and I finished the Danskin (women’s sprint length) Triathlon last summer and I am signed up to do it again this summer – wish me luck!
Carlyle Group Investment in Daptiv PPM Delivers Big Returns
The Carlyle Group is a global private equity firm with $81 billion under management committed to 60 funds. Carlyle invests in buyouts, venture & growth capital, real estate and leveraged finance in Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, North America and South America focusing on aerospace & defense, automotive & transportation, consumer & retail, energy & power, financial services, healthcare, industrial, infrastructure, technology & business services and telecommunications & media. Since 1987, the firm has invested $43 billion of equity in 774 transactions for a total purchase price of $230 billion. The Carlyle Group employs more than 1,000 people in 21 countries. In the aggregate, Carlyle portfolio companies have more than $87 billion in revenue and employ more than 286,000 people around the world.
Business Challenge
In 2005, Carlyle reviewed their project management process for their global IT team located in Washington, DC, New York, London, Hong Kong and San Francisco. “We determined that projects and project requests could be better managed,” says David Roth, CIO.
“There wasn’t enough communication about the status of projects and everyone was using their own approach to managing projects, which created inconsistency.” Across the IT team and contractors, everything from Microsoft Word and Excel to MS Project was being used – without a streamlined methodology in place.
“We wanted a way to improve project and portfolio management quality and consistency,” explains Roth. “Project managers were burdened with frequent project updates because processes weren’t aligned and it took up too much time.”
Carlyle needed a project management and collaboration solution with an easy-to-use interface that would help team members gain immediate visibility into projects and enforce a method of tracking, updating and executing projects. Roth wanted the flexibility and convenience of on-demand, which lead him to SaaS (Software as a Solution).
lnvesting in a Solution
The company began looking into different project management and collaboration vendors on the Web. “We tested four different project management tools but were soon frustrated with the user interface. They were too clunky and cumbersome,” says Roth. Then Carlyle stumbled upon Daptiv (then eProject). “We heard about Daptiv and looked into Daptiv’s PPM (Project and Portfolio Management) tool,” explains Roth.
Before choosing Daptiv as their software provider, Carlyle attended one of Daptiv’s online product demonstrations to gain a better understanding of how Daptiv PPM can impact the mid-office. “We really liked the simple user interface of Daptiv PPM – that was important to us,” says Roth. “We also liked the easy-to-use features, such as the templates, dynamic applications and document repository.” After attending Daptiv’s user conference, the roll out of Daptiv PPM to Carlyle’s IT team was facilitated by additional tools and support. “With the direction of some great online tutorials, we could really sell the benefits to the team members who could easily learn how to use the Daptiv tool,” explains Roth.
Value
With Daptiv PPM in place, “There is increased project visibility and transparency. Now, there is a simple and effective way to manage projects and portfolios, which impacts the quality and consistency of the work we turn around,” says Roth. After implementing the Daptiv tool, it has become evident that “Daptiv PPM ties in more than just project management. It is a portfolio management tool, and the fact that it is a low-cost, low-risk software solution provides us with additional flexibility and cost benefits,” says Roth.
In addition to using Daptiv PPM to help manage IT projects, Carlyle has found an additional way to utilize the tool for IT efforts. “We use several dynamic applications to help plan for new office build outs; we have about 20 offices to plan and the dynamic applications help us with the work breakdown structure.”
Over the years as a Daptiv customer, Carlyle has seen positive changes in the product, continuing to validate their choice. “We see a lot of value in Daptiv’s quarterly updates,” says Roth. “The functionality, performance and look and feel of Daptiv PPM has improved continuously over the years that Carlyle has been a customer.”
The Advantages of Daptiv’s Seasonal Product Updates
- Daptiv delivers its PPM auto-updates via the web, requiring no installation or re-configuration
- Daptiv provides security, redundancy, uptime, maintenance, and new features; you provide your creativity and business smarts to improving your work and your business
- Daptiv gives PPM users seasonal updates so customers always have access to the latest features and functionality
Daptiv Digest Survey: What do you think?
Whew. We managed to launch our second ever 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.