There is no doubt that businesses are dependent on their ability to deliver. However, it looks as if being able to meet deadlines is a matter of hit or miss. Most global companies are looking for ways to increase accountability. Without transparency and real time visibility there is no way to take decisions and being right or wrong is a matter of pure luck.

Many companies have tried in the past to implement project management software in order for them to be more accountable and deliver on time but implementing project management software is a project by itself. We just got an email from one of our customers describing the reality of project management:

"Could it be? Could this be the answer we'd been searching for all these long years? We didn't want to get too excited. We'd been down this road so many times but it looked so promising. Finally! The Gods Have Spoken and Clarizen be the name!"

Well, I definitely hope the customer is right. Actually, "the customer is always right" as we say internally at Clarizen.

I truly believe that change is happening and that online project management is overhauling the landscape. Soon, a company not using an on-demand (SaaS) project management software will indeed be left behind.

Every company is doing project management, however, the majority of companies are not using a PM tool to manage projects.

So, why are PM tools not working? I think there is one main reason- lack of team adoption.
The tools are designed for the individuals - not the team. However, teamwork is critical for projects to succeed. Clarizen's Project Team Automation solution is helping businesses be successful in managing their projects via team adoption.

When you have projects you spend 10% of the time on planning and 90% of the time on execution. You have 3 people that are doing planning and 50 the execution. Current PM tools are focused only on planning. So how do people execute their projects today? They use email which lacks any traceability, accountability and visibility. Clarizen is connecting the planning with the execution and delivering real-time visibility that is helping teams make the right decisions and on time.

The only way to connect the plan and the execution is to create team participation. Clarizen is leveraging email, users most commonly used solution, to drive team adoption. In addition, Clarizen enables content collaboration, creating a project repository for all documents, emails and discussions - all of which so critical for project success.

Who is actually managing projects? Who is being held accountable? Who has the deadlines to meet? Often it's the line manager, the VP of Marketing, the VP of Engineering, or anyone of us managers who are not likely to be trained project managers. Current tools are designed for certified project managers and are way too complex to be used by people like you and I.

Clarizen is helping project teams be successful by delivering project execution via team adoption.

Last week the entire Clarizen U.S. team flew with Avinoam, our CEO, to Las Vegas to launch our new marketing campaign called "Kiss Microsoft Project Goodbye" at the Software 2008 / Interop conference.

Don't get us wrong, MS Project is not our direct competitor but it sure does come up very often when prospects contact us in search of something...different.

The term 'Project Management' carries with it much baggage of the past, and is frequently associated with old school solutions that intimidate the average user and require much training to get even the basics. Hence at Clarizen we shy away from using the term 'Project Management' and prefer to be categorized under 'Project Collaboration' or 'Project Execution' two key areas where solutions such as MS Project fall very short.

Clarizen takes projects beyond the Planning phase and keeps team members engaged and contributing also throughout the Execution phase via the integration of user-friendly collaboration tools, Web 2.0 style. Providing a centralized pure SaaS solution coupled with consumer-play collaboration and usability aspects, brings fresh air to the Project Management arena and an alternative to Microsoft Project and other incumbent enterprise solutions which have lost touch with their user base and been slow to migrate down the enterprise 2.0 path.

If I had to define in one sentence what is a good company I would say that a good company is one that can sense and respond whereas a bad company is one that does not respond well to changes. Advances in technology have made it easier for more people than ever from different corners of the world to collaborate and compete in a way that was not possible before. Our business environment has become much more dynamic and demanding.

Let me illustrate this with an example:

When we are driving a car on a highway and drive 55 miles per hour we feel comfortable and safe. However, if we are in a hurry and drive 95 miles per hour we find ourselves much more alert and responsive to the road conditions and traffic around us. Taking this to the extreme, if we want to participate in a Formula 1 or NASCAR race, for most of us this would be impossible as we do not have the skills or the knowledge to drive so fast. Now, imagine your business is like in a Formula 1 car race and you do not have any choice but win this race. You need to have the right car, skills and knowledge in order to win. An enterprise 2.0 company is one that can win this race by gearing up on advanced technologies and methodologies. Hence, Clarizen. Clarizen helps companies execute their projects online with real time visibility and therefore allows them to respond better to changes.

Clarizen has been invited by Software 2008 / Interop organizers to present a session under the Enterprise 2.0 track taking place at the Mandalay Bay Hotel in Las Vegas at the end of the month.

Avinoam, our CEO, will jointly present with our Customer-turned-Partner 24-by-7 Service a great example how the new SaaS delivery model has created some great new business opportunities for small and nimble organizations.         Read                                 

Hal Anderson, CTO of 24-by-7 Service, will showcase how they evolved from an early Clarizen beta customer to become a key partner and be able to offer entirely new services within their vertical market of telecom services under their PBX+ using a co-branded Clarizen solution.

If you're heading to Vegas, be sure to come see our presentation on Wed. April 30 at 11:30AM. We also look forward to meeting customers while there, so please contact us to coordinate.

Last week we had the opportunity to present Clarizen at the prominent Under The Radar event held annually on Microsoft campus. The event coincided with our major release of Clarizen 2.0, a state-of-the-art Web 2.0 application.

Clarizen 2.0 is for project teams seeking a project management solution that is easy for everyone to use BUT not at the price of giving up indispensable project functionality. Maintaining the precise balance between simplicity and fundamental functionality is in itself an art that is Clarizen's ultimate goal - as it is for many other vendors competing in this popular space.

With Clarizen 2.0 project management software we have taken a leap forward in mastering the art of simplicity and have further enhanced the user interface (Something that even drew a nice mention on Rafe Needleman's blog Webware: "This product has a very nice, very Web 2.0 user interface..."), and usability allowing users to quickly ramp up while at the same time introduced new features as requested by our active users.

The all new 'What's New' feature clearly demonstrates how we pursue the ultimate balance as it clearly resembles common email applications' new info indicators with bold font, asterisks on icons and the ability to right click the mouse to mark new info as Read/Unread.

New features do not necessarily require extended training manuals and sessions. So long as we stick to what our users are use to from popular applications, such as MS Outlook and Excel, the goal of providing new features while keeping them easy to use is attainable.

Well, of course the project manager! But, in fact, we are all managing; we are managing our team, our activities, our budget and our time. We are all managing projects without even realizing it!

Simple business processes, such as hiring a new employee or updating a computer application, may not be perceived as 'projects' by definition but are indeed projects that entail team participation and coordination to reach the successful completion of the tasks at hand.

Project management tools today are designed to help the project manager do his job and not to support us in managing our activities. This is why there is major dissatisfaction with current project management software. People like us cannot use it efficiently or do not have access to it to begin with. Yet, we have to.

Think about our ability to know exactly where we are verses where we wanted to be. Think about having a common understanding with our team on what needs to be done. Think about having a global view on what is important at any given time. Think about being accountable. I think that a management system that is targeted ONLY at the project manager will fail to serve us in managing our activities as it will be too complex, cumbersome and of very limited value.

This is where Clarizen is unique. Clarizen is helping you manage. It is helping you, your team and the people that depend on you - regardless of whether they are from your company or from another organization - to manage your shared activities and projects. The Clarizen approach will change the way people think about projects and project management tools. Ask our customers!

Something quite unusual happened yesterday - a customer walked into our offices!

It's not that we are located in a remote outpost in Timbuktu but as a SaaS company catering to SMBs, customer interactions are seldom conducted face-to-face. The web as a platform for marketing and selling has virtualized the entire sales cycle removing any need for in-person interactions and even voice communications, leaving it all in the hands of ecommerce. Meeting a customer in person was an exciting, refreshing and enlightening experience.

Jay Irvine, VP of Marketing for Monterey AgResources and a Clarizen customer for a few months now, was in the vicinity of our San Mateo, CA offices and thought he would pay us a visit to get to know the team behind his project collaboration solutions.

Jay with Clarizen CEO Avi, and Account Mgr. Eric

AgResources is not in a ‘simple' line of business and their products are far from being simple, however, being a medium-size business with multi-million dollar sales and 80 employees they had quite a simple problem, how can they improve their bottom line without taking on new employees or endeavors. For Jay there was a straightforward answer - increase efficiency as stated in his words:

"I am a small company (up against the big giants such as Monsanto) and can only increase my business by being more efficient. Clarizen allows this."

AgResources produces and markets agricultural chemicals and nutrients, each of which entails creating projects that take the product from the early phases of R&D, through field trials, compliance, registration, production of marketing materials, packaging and finally selling to resellers. Each phase may involve both internal and external stakeholders all of which are dependent on each other to reach the final goal of adding a new line of products to the company. Chemists, marketers, compliance specialists, suppliers and management are constantly moving projects through the value chain until a project is marked ‘complete'.

Before using Clarizen, as typical in many businesses of this size, Excel spreadsheets were used to capture and disseminate all project information coupled with endless emails and hard-copy reports. Errors and delays were taken for granted in a system that lacked any ability to truly track and collaborate, as had occurred just a week earlier when they mistakenly double-paid a supplier $6500!

Once a month project team members get together in the Fresno headquarters to review each and every one of the approximately 50 ongoing projects. Papers are handed out and over the course of the day all projects are reviewed one by one in a painstakingly process. Decisions are eventually taken but only after a very long day of sharing all the information as it relates to each project. Jay knew there was something wrong and even more so once getting back to his desk after one of his frequent business trips. Projects were behind schedule due to emails sitting in members' inboxes (and even papers sitting on desks), miscommunications and costly errors (as the one mentioned above) all of which impacted the company's bottom line.

Just to clarify, Jay did not walk into our offices with iPod earplugs hanging over his shoulders. Jay is a farmer in heart and soul and still carries around mounds of paperwork and has never used any Project Management solution. Jay knew he was in a bind and was fortunate (for us too!) to be at the right time and place when Clarizen's Inside Sales person, Eric Pangilinan, introduced him to Clarizen via email. Eric helped Jay get the ball rolling, quickly setting-up his Clarizen account and adding some project templates which are recurring in nature in this business.

After spending a few hours on the Clarizen application, Jay shared the application with other members at AgResources and soon enough they were all sold onto it. His main concern was not about securing certain data from being viewed by specific team members but about the overwhelming time and effort that members were spending on locating and digesting the unstructured out-of-context data that was piling on their desks, emails and spreadsheets.

"It's not about keeping secrets from one another but about keeping people focused on the tasks at hand."

No one had proposed to Jay to use a ‘Project Management' solution nor was he seeking one out. Jay knew the ‘system' was broken and was determined to spearhead a radical change and phase out dated processes, including those monthly project sessions. With Clarizen all team members now have access anytime, anywhere to project data. Members of his team, who are not very web-savvy, can complete their progress reports on assigned tasks directly from their inboxes using Clarizen's fully integrated email features. The monthly meetings focus more on strategic decision making than sharing project data. More than anything else, Jay is excited about the flexibility of the Clarizen system which allows him to start projects from R&D or anywhere else in the value chain as opposed to other solutions that require of him to comply with very rigid guidelines.

Hiding the power of the system from the end user while putting a simple façade and emphasis on the usability has allowed him to secure internal team adoption. He is confident that accelerated team adoption will, in turn, translate to an increase in efficiencies and eventually the bottom line.

AgResources is just one of millions of small businesses worldwide weighed down by multi-member and inter-dependent business processes that are still not leveraging the tremendous value that ‘Web 2.0' attributes have to offer.

Clarizen is Jay's foot in the door on this new journey and, speaking of feet in the door, please come by our offices next time you're in town!

Managing was always a challenge; it's only that nowadays it is becoming more and more complex. The main challenge for organizations today is to maintain innovation. The business environment is constantly changing, requiring of us all to adopt a different modus operandi. More widespread adoption of Project Management solutions will drive the next phase in business maturity. When a company is able to run its business processes in a project management system they have a great benefit and a strong competitive advantage. The problem is the investment in making it work is so demanding that many companies often struggle with implementing the system until they ultimately give up.

Current project management tools are characterized by the following:

• Strong on management control - weak on teamwork 
• Tools are focused on planning - neglecting execution
• Projects are about people - tools ignore it
• Tools are local - projects are global

At Clarizen we are focused on solving these problems by adopting a Web 2.0 approach while offering the richness of enterprise software. The way we see the formula for success is: Team Adoption = Project Success. We are excited to release our first commercial version today after the great traction we got from the market in the Beta phase . I think that our decision to sell the Beta version already two months ago helped us as a company not only improve our product but also align all our internal processes in order to better support our customers.

This first release is just the beginning of the journey and there are many more versions to come as we reap the advantages of an On-Demand (SaaS) solution with zero installation. Having already landed from day one of the release 50 paying customers, 300 subscriptions and over 2000 organizations using our trial version, is a great start.

As I travel a lot and meet potential customers and partners, I came across a very interesting small new company named Blink. Blink is a pioneer company in the Conversation Marketing domain, which means adoption of enterprises and labels in the Web 2.0 communication buzz. I meet the Blink team, Israel, Sagi and Sarit in there studio office. Blink help enterprise build and operate blogs, Wikipedia's, forums and communities.

It is amazing to see the growing need of organization to adopt Web 2.0 tools. Blogs are used to communicate and express. It is used not just internally but also with the company partners and customers. Companies today are looking for Web 2.0 tools not just for communication, but also to better manage their business and customer relations.

One of the things I come across more and more is the need for transparent management. By sharing your managing process and projects with your companies' employees and further more with your partners and customers, you become more trustworthy

It turns out that organizations start to look at the rapid development of the Internet as a platform for easy and personal expression tool not as place for new opportunities and not just as a threat.