In today’s world when people can communication through all sorts of media, chat clients, emails, social networks, telephones and what not, there is a need to bring all communication back into one one place. You cannot let the information be scattered all over the place or someone will end up in trouble, either by spending hours to look for what was agreed or biting the bullet and doing what was NOT agreed upon just because they cannot find the communication anywhere. Larger the projects, larger the penalty.

There can be no doubt as to the critical importance of effective communication management in terms of successfully facilitating not only the ultimate success of any particular project, but the meeting of criteria as far as planning, cost and deadlines are concerned. Most project managers would admit that around eighty percent of their time is spent communicating in one form or another with the various members and groups within the project team.

This means that a project manager has to manage communications effectively before being able to organize the smooth and efficient progress of any project. With a greater than ever number of people tending to be involved in large-scale projects and a far more diverse range of methods of communication, this is no small feat. Added to this is the very real probability that many of the related parties advising on or developing aspects of the project might be based many miles apart – even on different continents.

Another issue which will have to be addressed is the screening of communications, and this may also require a range of means by which data can be screened. Clearly, some communications will be of a more critical nature than others will, and it will be necessary for any communications management program to be capable of prioritizing information and ensuring that it is delivered to the right person, in the right format, and with the appropriate priority handling.

Naturally, it is not simply the collation and screening of communications which will need to be handled effectively, but the distribution of that information to the various parties who will need to be informed. Any project manager may admit to being partially little more than a glorified errand boy, passing notes from one party to another!

However, the complexity and dynamism involved in large scale, international projects can result very easily in breakdowns in communications, and it will be crucial for any project manager to know that the chosen system will be capable of handling multiple streams of information, in multiple formats, delivering that information to the right person, in the right format, and all taking into account the priority for each transmission. It’s a great deal to expect, but entirely necessary, since the likely success of any project is necessarily reduced the greater the frequency of communications errors, delays or failures. The importance of this issue makes the selection of software programs a fundamental issue in managing any project, especially a large-scale one.

Today we bring such a solution for people who would like everything back in one place, not only for project management, but for communication management, information management and once again be able to find everything in one place, which is simple enough to search.

A lot of tools are available, but they are far more complicated than what a small company would need, they only need a simple solution which brings the information required by any team member accessible when they need. Cut down on relying on emails to communicate and cut down on time spent on making people remind of what was already communicated to them.

The solution is going to be available very soon, i.e. by end of december, 2009. We shall keep updating this blog with the progress…

SaaS can be lucrative for companies who are not technology centric and technology centric alike, with a difference that technology centric companies can still do with using their existing infrastructure to run the application. The decision they need to make is that are their current resources free enough to maintain the software and if they are that free, do these companies even need to carry that burden?

Resources do not come cheap, while a well designed SaaS and a good company running that application can actually come at the fraction of that cost.

To pick up a SaaS vendor you need to ask the following questions:

• Is our data safe with that company?
• Are they capable enough to sustain their business?
• Do they have the infrastructure to keep your data available?
• Do they have enough experience and staff to manage your data, for you?
• What kind of support do they provide?
• Are they open when you are?
• Is there a setup fee for getting started?
• Do they offer customization of the product for you?
• Will the prices remain same in future?
• What about the security of the data?
• What is their data backup policy?
• Do they provide option to integrate their solution into your existing applications, if yes how much do they charge?
• Is there a SLA? What happens if the SLA is not met?
• Whats the exit policy if tomorrow you do not want to continue their service?
• Do they have a backup plan, if their server(s) fails?
• How well do their support staff understands the applications?
• Can they help people or they can only understand the application from the IT perspective?
• Who manages their infrastructure? Do they do it themselves or they have a professional team to manage and ensure smooth operations?
• What kind of compatability features do thier solution offers?
• Is the solution easy to use, do they provide training, if yes, does it costs, if yes, how much?

Well these are some questions that will get you started to dig deep into what the vendor has to offer. Once you have tested the vendor and you are comfortable with working with them, it does makes a lot of sense to go SaaS way:

Minimal Initial Investment

Generally SaaS applications come with Pay-As-You-Go price model i.e. you pay as much as you use, it can’t get better than this. You start up with little to no expense, and pay only for the resources you use. When you start using the application seriously and start to depend on that application, it means the application is of a great value and then you should be paying for the hard work the company has put in to make the application come close to your business and is helping you grow. Even then the solutions generally present in the market are far more economic than building and maintaining one for your own personal use.

Reduced operations cost

You don’t have to employ people to manage servers, good resource comes at a premium and good people will be sitting idle 75% of their time because a good person knows who to get the job done in that time. On the other hand, cheap resource generally means you will be sitting idle 75% of the time without the data that application is supposed to provide you.

Available anywhere

These applications are generally designed to be available through a general web browser, which means your data is available to you 24*7 without you being stuck in office for that long. It makes a huge difference in today’s world that information be accessible to you when you need it. Ask your vendor, how do they handle small screen mobile devices?

I will continue from here in the next part of this blog, I hope this helps you to get a basic idea of how it can be helpful for you to go SaaS and how to choose the correct vendor to be a part of your business.