The call came from a Silicon Alley based Venture Capital Firm, Lee had been tasked with finding a project management solution that did more. Lee explained that more and more often their in-house erp and intranet software was not robust enough or inclusive enough. He needed more. He wanted to be able to tightly restrict the rights of each user, see how many tasks were assigned to each project member, identify risks to the project, he wanted to attach files but only the person doing the task should see the file. Lee kept going, he wanted special reports to be auto emailed, he wanted to get a text message if there was a issue, and he wanted a Gantt chart that he could print out on the plotter printer so it could go in their war rooms.
As a customer support specialist I want to make sure that we were hitting his sweet spots. But collaborating online is all about the team, communication skills and leading from the front. So I asked him a few questions about how big his group was, what tools they were using now and about his position in the firm. After a few minutes I had a good handle on how this firm operates and collaborates.
Lee said that he has some free time so I setup a screen share session. I started by showing how we created users and our advanced granular control over users. We setup two projects one using traditional WBS layout and another project using a SCRUM layout. Lee was delighted with the results, commenting that each group worked and thought differently and it was great the Same-page had such flexibility. We spent some time reviewing the risk management function and the difference between recurring tasks and cloning a subset of tasks.
Lee and I spent 45 minutes on the phone and it was time to move on for both of us. I think we’ll add a new customer in a few weeks.