Podio.com: Online Project Management and More

With all the haste about PayPal service losing its trust from the side of its corporate partners, and consequently, even regular clients, I don’t actually see the point in writing the whole post about the current problem with frozen accounts.

Yet, I wouldn’t dare keep silent and not express my opinion in short: the only obvious thing PayPal should do now is to expain themselves and change the politics, regarding freezing their partners’ accounts. Otherwise, the consequences for their business might be disastrous, I’m afraid.

Now, what I really found worthy of writing about is the separate, enterprise-oriented niche of the software market, which I haven’t even mentioned before – the enterpise services, aimed at managing and planning versatile projects within the company in a fast and convenient way.

In particular, one of the reliable players in the field is Podio.com, which is, by the way, among the winners in this year’s The Europas and is currently participating in The Crunchies 2011. I haven’t yet used this service myself (due to the obvious reason, that is my NOT having a company yet))), Still, according to what I have checked in terms of its features, and a short survey, that I’ve made among my few busy businessmen-friends, the service is seemingly providing high-quality assistance to every manager.

To start with, I’d like to say a few words about the official Podio.com site interface, which is absolutely perfect, as from my point of view. The design is minimalistic with pale backdround colours and the readable fonts. As for the structure of the site, every feature is explained in a very detailed way + there’s a short video-tutorial how it should be used at the same page, so the user won’t need to check the whitepapers to learn about Podio’s benefits.

As for the functionality, Podio.com is also impressive in number of options, available for clients, from Project and Event Management solutions to CRM and Lead Management tools, not to mention convenient Social Intranet, Product Development, etc.

What I’ve personally found especially useful is that Podio’s features (offered separately or in a package) appear to combine the functionality, which we accustomed to in JIRA, for instance, as far as task and project management is considered, in addition to CRM and budget calculation option. This is, obviously, a great Podio’s advantage over other services, as an array of different tasks can be resolved within the unified interface with specified dashboards.

Furthermore, you can also access the necessary data via user-friendly Podio mobile apps for iPone and Android (haha, seems like Windows Mobile and Blackberry users are unwelcome)), which makes it simpler to browse and manage the dashboards on the go.

The only question that is still bothering me is the possibility to maintain the work of the whole large corporation with a great number of employees all around the world (like Twitter, or 4shared staff, for example), or is it yet more suitable for middle-sized enterprises, like the ones, my friends have got?

This question remains open for now, but the overall impression of Podio is, nonetheless, absolutely positive!


Stay cool)
Andy)

The Europas 2011 - European Technology Startups Awards

It’s true that the ecomomic crises happen majorly on a cyclic basis, and it’s almost impossible to prevent another cycle.

Yet, the the recent economical crisis which has touched upon the whole world has proven the fact that virtually nothing can prevent the technological progress and the invention of numerous useful products or the lauch of ingenious, still already highly-profitable start-ups.

Here, it hasn’t been the surprise for me to encounter the exciting news about the upcoming “European Tech Awards (The Europas 2011)” taking place on November, 17, 2011 in London, aimed at defining the best technology startups in 2011, although the experts are now predicting the 2nd wave of economic crisis that will affect the EU countries most of all.

Despite of the fact that The European Technology Startups Awards is rather young (started in 2009), it has good chances to become one of the hottest awards in European software industry.

The thing is that unlike slower European tech startups development, the new business in the US have already become countless and I have written about many of them already, the tendencies show that the major part of them is connected either to a fun, yet partially useless apps, or the marketing and social media marketing services (let’s recall Visual.ly, Epom or Fliptop, for instance).

There’s, of course, other niches, mostly related to internet security and created to prevent the customers’ loss of money (I have tested both the oldies like McAfee and have also learnt about ITM Secure, if to give the names).

How about the nominees in The Europas 2011? I promise to present you some of my favorites tomorrow)


Stay tuned)
Andy