Surviving the recession: chose your partners wisely
Recession is on everyone’s mind these days. Whether your organization is currently affected by the economic conditions or not, most of us are looking at your spending, to see if where we can save.
Another place to look is your partners: your business partners, your suppliers, your clients. If your main supplier goes bankrupt, it could affect your business as significantly as if your biggest client cancels all orders.
In a recession, the businesses that survive are those with the least debt and those with enough cash flow. As sales may dwindle from lower demand, businesses that are debt-free will be able to weather the storm, while those with a lot of debt would fold under the pressure of the payments.
Furthermore, recessions are good times to invest, to be ready with new offerings when demand picks up on the other side of crisis. Because demand always picks up, sooner or later. However, if all R&D activities are suspended while money is tight, the business falls behind its competition, and it’s very difficult to pick up that lag […]
About the Websystems family
I never thought about our workplace in terms of family-friendliness. Still, there are nine of us at Websystems, and there always seems to be a baby or two on the way.
So I started counting. Between the nine of us, we have 19 children! That’s more than 2 per employee. I think that makes Websystems a very family-friendly workplace!
For Websystems, it’s important to hire the right people and to keep them. By making it easy to balance work and family, we are creating an environment that makes us happy.
For more information on happiness at work, check out the Chief Happiness Officer.
AceProject Survey, what features you like best and least
The results from the survey are in. It was our first-ever survey here at Websystems. Here’s a summary:
Which feature do you use most?
- Task management
- Time Sheets
- Project management
- Gantt charts
- Task comments
Which feature do you like the most?
- Email notifications
- Task Management
- Time sheets
- Tracking task and project status
- Reports
Which feature do you like the least?
- Time sheets
- Email notifications
- Reports
- Task creation workflow (tabs)
- Search
What’s interesting is that then time sheet module, email notifications and task management are present in all three answers. It seems time sheets and email notifications are either loved or hated. Among the comments we received, being able to edit the time sheet for the whole week (like a grid) and being able to customize how email notifications work were the most frequent.
However, people told us they loved to receive those email notifications. We were also told that time sheets are very easy to use.
Overall, what you told us is that you think our reports and our task creation workflow should be a lot better.
We hear you. Your comments were very insightful and we will make sure to keep the good stuff and […]
AceProject Survey: preliminary results
This week we sent a survey to all our AceProject account administrators. Since we are planning a complete rebuild of AceProject, we wanted to make sure to keep what people liked, and to fix the things that people didn’t like.
The responses were great! You left us very detailed answers, which gives us much greater insight into what you guys are doing with AceProject.
Pie charts, everyone!
Here are preliminary results analysis. We hope to get everything processed next week. Since we had open-ended questions, we need to read everything and group similar answers together.
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It was interesting to see who is using AceProject. While we weren’t surprised to see software developers, marketers and consultants in such high numbers, we realized we were popular in the education and publishing fields. It was also interesting to see how much variety there was amongst the responses.
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Looking at the responses for the favorite AceProject feature, the top 50% includes email notifications, task management, time sheets, status tracking and ease […]
It’s the human that makes the relationship
I’m a fan of Starbucks coffee. I love the taste and I love the atmosphere for their coffee shops.
In Quebec City, there are three Starbucks stores, and I have my favorite. Because the clientele is different at each place, and because I’ve developed a friendship with the baristas there.
Went I visited New York City for the holidays, I was really looking forward to being in a city that had a Starbucks on every corner (at home, I have to drive a few kilometers to reach one).
Over the 5 days that I spent there, I must have visited at least 6 or 7 different Starbucks stores. And almost every time, I was disappointed. It just didn’t feel the same. Even though it’s the same coffee, the same furniture, the same ads and posters on the walls – they even have the same blackboard drawings!
But it didn’t feel the same as my store here at home.
The difference is the relationship
Even though all the variables are controlled in chains like Starbucks, so that a customer’s experience can be […]
Happy new year!
Wow, another year ahead of us.
2009 will bring its load of challenges. The economic situation forces everyone to take a fresh look at expense. The idea is not to spend less, but to spent smart.
This is good for online software. Online software removes the burden of hosting, maintaining and upgrading both computer hardware and software. Take AceProject: for 99$ per month, all your staff gets access to a project management systems that also doubles as a time sheet system. For the price of one or two desktop software licenses, you’ll give project management software access to your entire staff for a year.
Using online software is not only cheaper, it’s smarter: people use the software with their favorite Web browser. It doesn’t matter anymore if the graphic design guy uses a Mac and the administrative assistant uses a PC. As long as their Web browser is fairly recent, the software works and the work gets done.
And because the system itself is not on the user’s computer, there is less demand on the computer’s hardware, like hard […]
Happy holidays!
I would like to take this opportunity to thank all fo you for believing in AceProject and for your continuous feedback.
AceProject will be closed for the holidays, between December 24th and January 4th, 2009. We will still be monitoring the servers and the support email inbox, so if you have an emergency, write us at support@aceproject.com.
Everyone here will take this time to relax, recharge our batteries and have some quality time with our families.
We wish you the same 🙂
Who likes change?
The short answer: no one.
When we are not the person who has decided the change, it automatically creates uncertainty. There are very few people who like uncertainty in their life.
When project managers decide to change their methods, it creates uncertainty. This uncertainty shows up as resistance to change: in you project team, your organization’s direction and your client.
As the project manager, it’s your job to communicate the change well:
- Why are you changing your methods?
- What is expected to be gain with this method?
- What is the impact of the change on the team, the direction, the client?
Moreover, as the project manager, it’s your job to pay attention to how your stakeholders react to the change.
- Are people “getting with the program?”
- Is resistance getting stronger or weaker?
It’s important to be close to your team, direction and clients. It’s your responsibility to sell the change, and then make sure it brings the benefits you sold your stakeholders.
How to get the most out of AceProject, Part III: Printers
Moving a brochure from an idea to a layout to an approved proof to a box of printed copies is no easy task.
With AceProject, printers can move files from one process to the next, and make sure that all the approvals are given before the file goes to the next process.
Create users for each production step in your workflow
At most printers, there are workstations near the presses. Those are not necessarily assigned to specific users. If you want to create a workflow that doesn’t depend on who’s running this part of the workflow, simply create users based on the process.
However you’ll need to make sure there is an email associated with this user, so they can receive email notifications.
Involve your clients
If you often work with the same clients, you can even give them access to AceProject, with limited rights, so that they can upload files, request quotes, or approve work before sending it to press.
Set Finish-to-Start […]
How to get the most out of AceProject, Part II: Teachers and Schools
Last week, we saw how AceProject can help consultants ensure their budgets stay on budget.
This week, we’ll see how teachers and schools can improve communications with their students and keep track of all their classes in a central location. For workshop-oriented classes, AceProject can make your class like a project team.
One project, one class
AceProject helps prepare your materials for your classes. Simply setup each class as a project.
Then, you can create a task for each thing that you need to do to prepare the class, such as your class presentations, exams, or handouts. You can also create a task for each important event when you give the class, such as exam dates and paper due dates.
Not only can you upload all your documents to the task, you can even keep several versions of the same document right there in the task.
Once your class is all setup, you can keep it as a template and recreate the project for each term that […]
