It's time businesses move beyond spreadsheets and connect the islands within their organizations. The islands exist in all organizations where different processes and tasks are performed in separate and disconnected systems, lacking connectivity and context. Connecting these islands can improve business visibility dramatically, get operations running effectively and help managers make better decisions quicker, thus, be sharper and much more efficient. When running our operations we should ask ourselves: Do we know who is responsible? What has been promised by whom? Where are the relevant documents? When will results be delivered? What changes were made and when? We use Excel for almost everything, planning, budgeting, execution and control. We schedule with Outlook, communicate with email, report into different systems.

We are working on islands. Read more.....

Running a SaaS business is a profession in and by itself. In this post I want to share my views on the key elements of running a SaaS company. I would first state that the most important part is understanding the limitations of your own organization and knowledge. You need to understand that the main question you should be asking yourself is: how do you know that you are making progress? Read more.....

Since this new feature can get quite confusing, no better way to describe it than with examples.

Clarizen 2.7 is all about supporting global organizations' (big and small) ability to manage a user base that is:

• dispersed across different countries, languages (now Spanish too!) and currencies
• frequently updating foreign exchange rates
• working with many external contractors and partners
• needs to be able to view instantly financial data (costs, billing, as it reflects in users reporting their hours over timesheets) as the project progresses

New features include support of foreign currencies, customizable exchange rates, Time Tracking Budget info in Current Project view, improved Gantt charts, Work Item unique ID, Import new users from file and more.

For a more detailed tutorial with additional screenshots, please visit: http://www.clarizen.com/NewFeaturesInClarizen2_7.aspx

At these tough times of budget cuts, freezes, job losses, re-orgs and an overall sense of uncertainty, a dose of Clarizen might just be what you need to weather the storm.

Here are some sample scenarios, of how using Clarizen can benefit your organization, some of which are based on stories we hear from our customers:

1. "We have less people to do the same, if not more, work."
   
   After a reduction in workforce the remaining team members are juggling even more tasks, are members in more projects and need to stay on top of their work in order to allow the organization to continue normal operations.  This is one of the core advantages of using a centralized SaaS (Software as a Service) solution, as Clarizen, where all users can easily (even over email) contribute directly to the master project plan, see where their tasks and projects stand at any time and have much of the administrative work of project management removed due to the automation of mundane tasks.
   Read more.....

I know I just posted release notes of 2.5G just a couple of weeks ago but start getting used to it - with the adoption of our frequent Sprint releases, Clarizen is now able to churn out fully loaded releases in very short intervals.

Clarizen 2.6 features a major uplift in Resource Management functionality with an overhaul of the Resource Load screen to make it an interactive, dynamic source for managing the resource allocation across all projects. Whereas before resource assignments would need to be updated on the Current Project view, now it can be handled also from the Resource Load view spanning across all projects.

In addition to the Resource Load overhaul, we are proud to unveil the all new Resource Calendar view, another work of art from our creative development team. Similar to the latest Gantt chart released in Clarizen 2.5G, the Resource Calendar view is also based on a Flash file and is loaded with features allowing you to see resources' daily task breakdown, dependencies, percent completed, overload indicator, and more.

Last week we announced the first of its kind project management integration with Autodesk's AutoCAD solution at AutoDesk University being held in Las Vegas. For the first time, a pure on-demand solution seamlessly integrates with AutoCAD, bringing core project management functionality into AutoCAD.

AutoDesk University participants stand in line to see a demo of Clarizen and get a glimpse of Clarizen mascot Josh Jr. standing guard with Clarizen vest and cap 

Just two weeks after releasing Clarizen 2.5, a major release featuring time tracking, customer billing and other new features, the fully loaded version, Clarizen 2.5G, with the long awaited Clarizen Gantt Chart, is now live.

1. Gantt Chart View

Read more.....

Clarizen 2.5 augments our existing project management solution with a turn-key solution for services organizations needing to also track hourly resources and bill the respective customers.

From now on you can use Clarizen from the initial point of planning and budgeting through executing, collaborating, tracking and finally billing customers, paying hourly resources and creating customizable reports.

With a single point solution to manage all these fundamental aspects of projects for professional services organizations, users no longer need to look outside for third party vendors rather it's all in ONE place.

Beyond timesheets and customer billing, Clarizen 2.5 includes additional powerful features such as: Super User providing edit and view permissions to all projects; Financial User giving access to financial data in the Clarizen organization; ‘Shortcuts' where users can have a work item (task, milestone, project) from one project impact a completely separate project without needing to bring them under one project and ‘ALAP' (As Late As Possible) allowing you to plan your project backwards from the Due Date so that you can factor how late you can start working on a project that.

Continue reading for a more detailed description of the new features unveiled with Clarizen 2.5. Read more.....

We are excited to announce that Clarizen Time Tracker along with many other new features will be made available very soon.