Projectmates Construction Software Blog

The Final Countdown to 2010!

It’s the final countdown to 2010! It’s also a good time to look back at 2009 and take stock of our achievements at Systemates. With two major releases (and one minor) launched and customer success stories to share, as well as an ever-expanding web presence to better reach our customers and partners, we have had a good and productive year at Systemates.

We kicked off the year with a major release - V9.0. This version had all the bells and whistles that make a good web-based software a pleasure to navigate. A powerful Ball-in-court applet, a scrolling photo feature, and a project map powered by Bing were just some of the cool features. By June we had V9.5 with some improvements to the preventative maintenance and repair work orders module. And we wrapped up the year with V10.0 – offering a completely revamped financial module featuring Earned Value Analysis, enhanced Budget Tracking and a versatile Portfolio Management module.

One of our biggest customer success stories was successfully integrating Projectmates with Oracle accounting system for a large S&P 500 retailer client. Another major success story was streamlining Projectmates’ financial tracking capabilities with the labor timesheets for a large government client and allowing them to get a clear picture of total project costs in real time.

But it’s not been all work! Systemates actively supports sustainable construction and our goals are aligned with LEED, which is why we became a member this year. Our online document management tools save about 3 tons of paper for every construction project (on average). And we have had plenty of fun writing our blogs and keeping you informed and posted on industry happenings and Projectmates updates on our user group at LinkedIn.

We’re excited about 2010! We have many innovative ideas we’re going to start working on next year! Happy New Year from the team at Projectmates!

This holiday season – we present Projectmates User Group! Stay Connected!

There are more articles available online on social networking and the benefits thereof, than there are on the Tiger Woods story! Imagine that! But with enough being said on the topic, I will try to avoid preaching about the merits of virtual business interaction – and get right down to what really seems to work – at least for most businesses. At Projectmates, we created our brand new user group on LinkedIn.com to provide our customers and partners with a platform for interactive communication. We just got started, but it’s been great so far! It’s a great place to go in to share something new you learnt about the industry or to simply reiterate and remind other users about an important best practice in construction management or related topics.

 

Click here to be a part of the Projectmates User Group on LinkedIn.

We love our new user group on LinkedIn already. It’s exciting to be able to give our customers more avenues to reach us and share their thoughts, views and opinions in an informal setting. Everyone has a “Eureka” moment when they come upon a new or fascinating viewpoint, idea or news article that they cannot wait to share with other enthusiastic users on the group. If it benefitted them in some way, it’s sure to benefit others as well. That’s what a user group ought to do – provide something of value to its users.

 

Here’s the wonderful thing about connecting virtually. Sure, you can attend several networking events a year and pocket a100 business cards at every one of them. But in a world where executives are starved for time and companies are adapting strict cost-cutting measures, social networking sites (for the serious networker) is the next best thing to sliced bread and butter. I don’t believe it will or that it should necessarily replace traditional face-to-face interaction. I think the former should complement the latter and reduce them when necessary. It’s important to remember the ‘networking’ part in social networking. So use it to your best advantage! Be active and ‘follow’ activities of your business acquaintances. The next big business opportunity may just come from that!

 

Joining a user group definitely has its benefits. For instance, if you join a Projectmates user group at LinkedIn, you might find yourself automatically connected to several other connections within the construction industry. You may come across familiar names that you would like to hear from or would like to be connected too. One connection leads to several others! We all know that word-of-mouth and references speak much louder than any other marketing tool. Having people endorse you will come in handy when looking for a job or trying to bid on a project within your industry and finding and communicating with key contacts makes all the difference.

 

And finally, you never have to worry about looking for that lost business card again. Just sign into your networking site and get all the information you want about your contact. How easy is that?

 

Come be a part of the Projectmates User Group on