Project Desk Helps Overseas Development Company

Manage Projects

by Matthew Raymer - Univeral Computational Solutions

Based in the Philippines, Universal Computational Solutions is a software development,  Web design, and computer maintenance company. With multiple development projects, clients on several continents, and employees working remotely, we needed a web-based system to enhance communications and keep projects running smoothly.  In May, we started using Project Desk, and since then, we've been using it to organize our projects.

The functionality that gets the highest mileage for us is the file exchange space. Project Desk lets my programmers, editors, managers, and assists post files on-line where the rest of the team (and in some cases, clients) can access them. We exchange memos, specifications, code, and software.  I find the Recent Documents section on the main page extremely helpful -- I can just look there periodically for documents to review.  It is also more reliable than using IM or email to transfer files -- for one, its available to all people in the project.

We simultaneously manage several different projects with Project Desk.  We have a project manager who assigns tasks to different team members. We set due dates for the tasks, and Project Desk automatically sends reminders when the tasks are due.  It's nice having a central place where we can see an up-to-date status of our projects.  

With clients in Asia, Europe, and the U.S., we work across time zones. We can give our clients access to Project Desk (when they log in, they see only their projects). Our clients can instantly check our progress, add new tasks, post questions or comments in forums. Project Desk has been a great tool for our company.

Matthew Raymer

President

Universal Computational Solutions

mraymer@universal-solutions.net