"The slightest advantage in anyone being, at any age or during any season, over those which comes into competition, or better adaptation in however slight degree to the surrounding physical conditions, will turn the balance."

Charles Darwin, on The Origin of Species (1859)

It's strange to start an article about online project management with a quote from Charles Darwin, but having read it I immediately thought of the incremental advantage that sharing documents online brings to the businesses that embrace it.

In these competitive times businesses are looking for any edge, any advantage any differentiator that will set them apart from the competition, that to be blunt will allow them to survive first and go on to thrive later. No doubt Mr. Darwin would refer to this as "survival of the fittest".

First and foremost sharing documents online enables you to work more closely with your clients, build stronger ties and involve them directly with their own projects and whilst you of course retain control of what your clients can and cannot see, all evidence suggests that even sharing some of your contractual information will solicit a positive response, "The Clients love it" is the most common praise we get from our users.

Let's not forget the advantages to you. Open communication between team members brings issues out into the open (not buried in somebody's inbox), removing errors, saving time and reducing costs! Project management becomes easier, with one channel of communication, one central repository for all contractual documents and easy access for all users, from anyplace and on any device.

Add to that the inherent security offered by a cloud-based solution (essentially all documents are automatically backed up), the ease of start-up, this is a turnkey solution with no IT requirements other than a PC or Mac with Internet access and of course the flexible purchase plans that allow you to pay monthly with no long-term commitment required and the competitive advantage becomes apparent.

Ease-of-use is of course paramount. Our system resembles the folders that you can create on your desktop (or Mac) and into those folders you can place whatever documents you like, Word, Excel, PDF or of course CAD Drawings, in fact anything you like. Once you've created your folder and added your content you can then decide who should be allowed to view it. You can grant view; view and edit and view edit and delete permissions to any user. So to your own team you will probably give view and edit permission to, but to clients contact outside your organisation you're free to restrict them to view only access.

Furthermore permissions can be set at each folder level, this enables you to create a sophisticated a folder tree as you like with users being granted access to only folders (or Projects) that they are directly involved in.

To make things run smoothly, when a user logs in he only sees the folders that he has permission to view. So there is no chance of the use of becoming frustrated because he/she can see a folder (but can't access it). If the user doesn't have permission to view it, they won't even be aware that there. This particular feature has proved extremely popular with projects involving multiple disciplines or organisations.

So, the designers can focus on what they need to do and the builders on their own work whilst the management team can see the overall picture.

If you'd like to know more about online project management for your businesses, how you can share documents online and even this manage tasks, calendars and schedules online, click or call for more information, or try now.