DeskAway, an emerging startup in online project management solutions is gearing up for major expansion. We caught up with Sahil Parikh, CEO and Founder – Synage Software Pvt. Ltd, the company behind DeskAway.
What is your current business revenue? Any other business statistics you could share with us?
We currently have twenty thousand registered users, majority of them come from US and UK.
Sorry, we do not give out financial details.
What potential do you foresee for Online project management and SaaS arena in future?
Obviously, I see a lot of potential and hence part of this exciting industry. With the growing number of small businesses/ distributed teams, increased broadband penetration, and 24×7 mobile work culture. Online project management tools are rightly poised to give teams an accurate view of how their projects are doing and help eliminate common problems that occur when multiple people are collaborating. For instance project email spam, multiple file versions, lost files, task accountability issues, lack of clarity & work transparency. Today, project management tools are about people, conversations, relationships, sharing, execution and collaboration. I believe that online project management tools will borrow a lot of principles from social networking services and bring them to the enterprise in the coming years. These tools will be more about project “collaboration” between teams rather than project “management”.
I am a big proponent of SaaS and hence very optimistic about it’s future. Economically and technically it makes sense for a business to adopt SaaS. It’s as simple as outsourcing what is non-core and retaining what is core. Increasing broadband penetration, sophistication of web technologies & tools, lower cost of hardware, growing number of small to medium businesses, changing customer mindset and globalization is making this paradigm shift possible. In my opinion, its going to be a requirement for every business to adopt Web 2.0 tools and SaaS applications if it wants to compete in a global world. Going forward the browser will become the new OS and all functions within an enterprise will be delivered through various SaaS initiatives.
What are your views regarding bridging the gap between functions provided by a full-fledged CRM and online project management solutions in general?
I think either of the solutions can have the other as a complimentary solution. You can track customer communication before a sale is made and possibly require a project collaboration tool once the sale takes place so that your team can easily organize, manage and track the customer’s project online.
Who is your major targeted users – Startups or mid and large size companies?
Our target market are the small to medium professional services firms (e.g. Internet/ Software, Consulting, Education, Creative firms etc.), non-profits and groups within larger organizations that work in teams and want a system-driven approach to managing and tracking their work.
What part of your Subscriber base comes from India and other major contributory countries in terms of revenues?
Most of DeskAway’s paid subscribers are from U.S. and U.K. We are seeing some growth in India in the last 6 months. Currently, only around 10%-15% subscribers are from India.
What are the major challenges faced in online project management solutions? What all features would you like to introduce in DeskAway in future?
The biggest challenge in an online service is to manage client expectations (since we are building the service for them!). With SaaS, you are not customizing for each individual customer so dealing with feature requests is one big challenge – deciding what goes in the software and what stays out. Plus, there are quite a few PM tools that have cropped up in the last year or so. Differentiating your business on the web is another challenge. One thing we have learnt is that its not about the features that make your product successful. Its the overall experience that your brand provides to the customer at the end of the day. Customer support, online help, features, software load/response times, what you stand for etc. need to work in sync to provide a positive user experience.
We have a huge wish list but a couple of things we would like to accomplish in the next 6 months or so are – iphone/mobile web version, API’s, Invoicing and Expense tracking.
One thing is clear. I think project management solutions like DeskAway, Basecamp are here to stay. Their main short-term priority is to acquire small and mid-size companies as their clientele. They can even go for bigger companies by providing some additions to meet larger needs.
This sounds right on! Quality knowledge work is more about decentralized decision making and less about top-down following of orders. The better project management tools are web based and collaborative.
I am a software engineer so I use Code Roller which a PM web app specifically for software development projects. Code Roller lets me collaborate with clients and other team members in the specification of requirements, use cases, designs, etc. It also does the traditional project tracking stuff too.
Interesting interview. I agree with the fact that PM tools and CRM tools will live along each other. The reason is that the tools that would combine functions would become that much bigger and that much more complex. I have found that adopting a new tool is difficult for a team at first because of learning curves. Easier, well sharpened tools will be preferred to complex (and generally underutilized) umbrella solutions.
I prefer using Desk Away (http://www.deskaway.com) because of its features richness and affordability. Also the tech support is excellent.