Podio, simplified projects and communications

…in the product soon ruled it out. Enter Podio. Initially, we had looked at Podio some months back and it seemed too complex and at the same time not flexible enough. Looking this time, albeit more in-depth, and WOW, it’s a fantastic product and great replacement to Yammer, it also seemed to offer more. There are lots of “built-in” applications and at first glance they seem to meet your needs but we found that most of them were too complicated. So,… […]

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What is the best project management app for a digital agency?

…Basecamp + Trello. All the best. RONNIEROCKET.COM Don’t forget Podio. www.podio.com Martin Dower Ronnie, we use Podio. Extensively https://www.connected-uk.com/?s=podio and even wrote an article on it 15 months ago https://www.connected-uk.com/2012/12/podio-simplified-projects-and-communications/ Ronnie Rocket So you went from Basecamp to Podio (we did this process ourselves) and back again now using them both depending on what suits you the best,… […]

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New year … new us … come and talk

…ring, cloud-drives, contact management and groups. Integrated tightly with Podio for contact management, email and cloud-drives. SIP telephone via Spitfire giving us full DDI, routing and soft-phone support on mobiles. Podio, we’ve already covered above, provides us Agile development, CRM, Intranet, Sales & Marketing and integration with other key applications we use such as Zendesk, Mailchimp, Instapaper. Podio is cloud-based across all our clien… […]

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Slack: Welcome to new world communications in the workplace

…one through a fair few services including Yammer before we landed on using Podio, primarily as a platform for storing internal processes and data. We still have Podio, but only as a legacy storeroom and it’s hardly touched these days. Company culture. The power of social. Work shouldn’t be boring and dull, and here’s where Slack really shines for us. It’s a place for staffers to frolic, share interesting stuff and generally play. We support the pl… […]

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We’ve been “Slackers” for 3 years now

…r and sometimes political! In reverse order, we’ve used Slack (2013-date), Podio (2012-2014), Trello (2012), Yammer (2012), Basecamp (2007-date), Skype Chat (2008-2014), XMBForum (2001-2012) and Email (1996-2005). All served a purpose, and most were useful and valuable. However good the evaluation period is, you don’t really get to see how good applications are until you’re elbow-deep in them day-to-day. In our experience, Yammer, Trello and Skype… […]

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How to use persistent communication (Slack et al) properly

…forever more. Today, we use Slack and have extensive experience of Skype, Podio, Yammer, Forums, Campfire and Basecamp. We have 3 decade of experience of chat applications in the workplace. The best bits We all mostly like to belong, so if you have remote teams then a common place where relationships are encouraged is a good thing. The absence of hierarchy and the conversational nature encourage interaction (mostly) and ad-hoc chatting without th… […]

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A year of true independence

…ade it happen Cloud-based collaborative applications. Worthy of mention is Podio, Basecamp, Google Apps (Mail & Calendar) – all are woven into the fabric of how we work. Podio is our go-to place for chat, important information, standardised documentation and HR applications. Basecamp is client-facing project control and Google is used for old-fashioned email and calendaring. Agile Project Management. We had a couple of false starts and cock-ups in… […]

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Using a tablet for business : iPad Mini vs Nexus 7

…ud services. This includes: email – GMail, both personal and work accounts Podio – an enterprise-grade, social collaboration platform Zendesk – for customer services support ticket management Amazon AWS – server and cloud-based services management WordPress – for editing, adding content – a CMS Dropbox – file sharing Skype – voice communications and tele-conferencing, frequently across countries Highrise – for sales and customer management Quickbo… […]

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Taking back your day [infographic)

…nal, non-critical, communications to an enterprise social network – we use Podio but you could as easily use Yammer or a whole raft of other applications. Thirdly, get your projects off email and into a collaborative project workspace such as Basecamp or Strikebase. We, again, use Podio for this but very successfully used Basecamp for almost 5 years. Finally, keep a firm grip on email subscriptions. This can be done manually by rigorously unsubscr… […]

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Cutting the office strings, the first 60 days

…oach. The bell calls all hands to the pumps via an application we wrote on Podio. There are a number of initial discovery steps that release back to work the resources not required to fix the issue. The remaining folks work until the problem is resolved. We’re planning to stay agile and that means the framework above is likely to evolve over time. Stuff we’ve learned I’ll share here some of the smart moves we discovered to ease the transition. Tru… […]

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Twitter as a support channel

…ices from top of the tree companies such as Amazon AWS, WPEngine, Zendesk, Podio and GitHub but the best experience we’ve had so far in the Twitter world is from the excellent team at Podio. Very impressive. by Martin Dower Related articles 30% of Top Brands Have Customer Service Twitter Handles More Top Brands Are Using Twitter for Customer Service 10 Brands That Do Customer Service Right on Twitter How Social is Your Customer Service? Welcome to… […]

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Private social networks, a growing trend

…ically, in the enterprise with business-based social networks from Yammer, Podio and others. But it doesn’t stop just there. Lady Gaga’s tech team Backplane created LittleMonsters.com as a fans’ site and helped make Lady Gaga one of the most popular entertainers in the world. Backplane is now branching out to create more niche communities for brands, starting with Conde Nast’s photography magazine and Guns’N’Roses. Little Monsters pulled in nearly… […]

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My top Apps – by Martin Dower, CEO

…ack to chat at work for over 2 years. Better than Skype, more focused than Podio and Yammer. Zendesk. We live and die on the quality of our client service. I get to keep a close eye on the hundreds of work tickets our support teams pile through every month. Quickbooks. In just 3 years we’ve been able to cut our monthly accounting resource used by over 90%, you gotta love cloud-based accounting and automation Spotify. I love music, and have been a… […]

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How to build a great little agency

…ernal email five years ago when we adopted Yammer for short-time, and then Podio and finally Slack two years ago. Innovative, Not Derivative We plough our own furrow, nuture our own innovation and invent bright and amazing new things. This makes us different and very forward looking. We’ve adapted and evolved across the various phases of being a web development house and now a digital agency – it would be a safe bet that we’re still here in 2030!… […]

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NoCode, the future of digital deployment

…t as almost anyone can now develop an application. Take a platform such as Podio and give it to a finance bod or an HR bod and within a few hours they will have built micro-applications to deal with their individual issues. These may be temporary, and that’s a good thing as the business challenges that organisations face will change ever more quickly to issues will come and go. The temporary (or disposable) nature of the these applications don’t w… […]

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Integration + Simplification = Paradise

…r the bits that needed it (for example; saving Instapaper Favourites, storing legal documents that I can search and big manuals) and at the same time it talks to pretty much everything I use daily including Podio and Google Apps. 2013 has become a year of integration and simplification. Leaving me to spend more time being productive, or playing golf; whichever takes my fancy. by Martin Dower… […]

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What’s occurring in 2015?

…nternal work communication (new shared platforms such as Slack, Yammer and Podio) and consumer services such as Uber (Taxis), AirBNB (beds), Task Rabbit (chores), Zopa (lending), and BT Cloud (WiFi). Legislation is the problem here, and often old patent rules get in the way of sharing information, technology and ideas in an open space without grubby licensing and copyrighting. SmartPay Most people don’t actually like their bank, or the archaic pra… […]

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Email is going to be the death of us

…lot less distracting. These applications, and I’m talking about Basecamp, Podio, Zendesk, Trello, Skype etc, are great except not everyones use them. As Email is the lowest common denominator, sadly, we all end up in the mire of email threads. We’re luckier than most, as a digital agency we communicate in three distinct funnels, and have unique solutions for each of them. None of them are email-centric. Project Communications. We work collaborati… […]

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July Support Review

…help. We couldn’t manage successfully this load on support without an excellent team, great agile processes, lovely clients, brilliant suppliers and excellent software & platform apps. A huge thanks goes out to Zendesk, Podio, Skype, Amazon (AWS), WPEngine and, of course, WordPress. We have, again, upgraded and enhanced our Zendesk support desk to cope with the increased demand and continue to invest heavily in WordPress Support…. […]

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Work fast, play more

…something simple as a Skype group, or something more sophisticated such as Podio or Yammer Get people working at home, in cafes and in bars We’ve mostly learned the hard way, and often by accident. Many moons ago we lost our email servers and several hundred thousand emails. At the time most people had 100s or 1000s of emails in their inboxes and we feared the worst when the backup systems failed to work. We recovered in a few days, and never reli… […]

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