As the new CEO of Daptiv, I’d like to give you some background on the recent acquisition of Daptiv by Parallax Capital Partners (“Parallax”). I’d also like to share some thoughts on Daptiv’s strategy going forwards.

First, I’d like to outline why Parallax acquired Daptiv. Parallax’s goal is to acquire companies that have great products, satisfied customers and a strong employee base and take them to the next level. Unlike some firms who have relatively short investment horizons, Parallax acquires and invests in businesses for the long term. Daptiv is a perfect match for the Parallax portfolio as it is a market leader and innovator, it has a strong list of enterprise clients and it has excellent potential for future growth and success.

Daptiv, as a profitable business with recurring revenue of nearly $20 million, is well positioned to extend its leadership in the $1.6 billion market for PPM software. Over the last 12 years, Daptiv has accumulated more than 500 enterprise customers and 80,000 subscribers spanning all major vertical industries. In the last six months alone, we’ve added more than 70 new customers to a roster that includes BASF, Chase Paymentech, Harvard University, Honeywell, La Poste and Virgin Blue.

Second, Parallax is not a typical investment firm because we play an active role in operating our companies. Our partners have extensive experience running and growing companies and, in this case, we have deep knowledge and operational expertise in the PPM space. As the new CEO of Daptiv, I can assure our current and prospective customers that we are committed to the PPM market and helping them operate their businesses more efficiently and effectively. Furthermore, as part of the Parallax portfolio, Daptiv now has access to additional growth capital for investments and targeted acquisitions to drive the next wave of innovation in the market.

Finally, Daptiv will continue to operate as an independent business and nothing will change from a customer perspective – our existing customers will continue to receive the same excellent service and support, quarterly product updates and innovation in our PPM roadmap. After the first few days on the job, I can attest to quality of Daptiv’s talented and experienced team and their passion for delivering great customer service. To our prospective customers: we look forward to demonstrating to you why we are the market-leading PPM solution and how the dedication and professionalism of our people sets us apart from everyone else.

In summary, we’re excited to be entering the next phase of the company’s growth and continuing to deliver the best on-demand PPM tools and services in the market. I look forward to meeting with as many customers and prospects as possible and hearing how we can further improve our offerings to meet your needs. If you have any questions, please feel to reach out to me directly at jbaldwin(AT)daptiv.com or +1-888-621-8361.

John Baldwin
CEO, Daptiv

Today we’re excited to announce that Parallax Capital Partners, a software and technology acquisition firm, has acquired Daptiv, Inc. You can read the full press release here.

Daptiv will continue to operate as an independent business and nothing will change from a customer perspective – you can expect to receive the same excellent service and support, quarterly product updates and innovation in our PPM roadmap.

In addition, we have a new CEO, John Baldwin, who has over 24 years of leadership experience in the project management space, so he’ll bring a great focus and energy to the company around our PPM offerings.

Everyone at Daptiv is excited about this news and we’re looking forward to the next phase of Daptiv’s growth as part of the Parallax portfolio of companies.

If you have any questions on the acquisition, please don’t hesitate to contact our 24x7 support at www.daptiv.com/support.

The Daptiv Team

 

Over the last 24 hrs, there has been some misinformation spread in a technology blog and by our competitors about the health of Daptiv’s business. The misinformation includes claims that Daptiv is being ‘dissolved’ or going out of business, and that Daptiv’s employees no longer work at the company. There has also been some speculation about a potential acquisition that would give Daptiv a new owner with significant financial resources and operational capabilities to expand the business.

Some smaller competitors have been trying to take advantage of these rumors by contacting our customers directly to create uncertainty about the state of Daptiv’s business. We routinely outperform these competitors in the marketplace and it’s unfortunate that they find it necessary to resort to these tactics. The customers we’ve spoken to find this type of business practice unethical and inappropriate. We agree with them and are investigating the source of the misinformation and will take appropriate actions as required.

While, I can’t comment on a confidential acquisition that is being discussed, I can share with you some facts to clear up the misinformation being spread about us:

* First, Daptiv has the enviable position as the market-leading SaaS vendor in the project management space with over 500 enterprise customers and 80,000 subscribers.

* Second, Daptiv is a profitable, growing, recurring revenue business of nearly $20 million and it’s completely untrue that the company is being shut down. All Daptiv’s employees remain at the company and there are no plans to change this.

* Finally, the company is 100% committed to the project portfolio management market and delivering the outstanding service and support customers have come to expect from Daptiv.

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact our 24x7 support at www.daptiv.com/support.

Mark Klebanoff
CEO, Daptiv

On Wednesday, June 30, 2010 at 2pm ET/1pm CT/11:00 am PT, Daptiv is sponsoring a free Webinar with Margo Visitacion, an expert in IT PPM at Forrester Research, who will present on “The Need to Break Out of the PPM Silo” and how integrating with back-office systems like ERP can help.

If you can’t make the Webinar, don’t worry, it will be recorded and available in Daptiv’s archives. Register and you’ll get the info in email so you don’t miss out.

There has been quite a bit of news and research lately about the state of ERP software systems – that’s Enterprise Resource Planning – provided by companies like Netsuite, Oracle and SAP. So, what is it and why should you care if you’ve never heard about it or dealt with it before?

Historically, ERP systems have managed the “guts” of many major organizations, from functional areas like HR to inventory and accounting. These giant systems house lots of crucial business data that are necessary to keep a company running – we’re talking everything from employee ID numbers to vendor purchase orders. However, it can be tricky to get information in or out of such monolithic systems – and frequently financial information tracked in an ERP system is generated (and also managed) in other software systems, like PPM, for instance.

Independent research firm, Forrester Research, recently published a report on the current ability to integrate software systems with ERP, noting that although some progress has been made, this really important nut has not been completely cracked yet. Forrester used the analogy of ERP integration as a “beast” that needs to be tamed. Though the big ERP vendors have their work cut out for them, immediate solutions are being created through Software-as-a-Service integrations that can be put in place as quickly as 3 days, and for a fraction of the price of other integration options.

Why the big push to integrate systems with ERP?  Here are a few for project managers to consider:

• Show off: Reflecting your PM financials in the ERP system will showcase your results and the value of your portfolio
• Save yourself (and your team) some hassle: If your PPM system is properly hooked up with your company’s ERP system, you will cut out duplicate processes and make your teams more productive (example: streamline payroll – enter hours once for project status and for the paycheck)
• Be a hero: Your company’s accounting team will love you if you make it easy to line up project financials with ERP financials. Accurate info is your CFO’s key to a better night’s sleep!

Learn more about the why’s and where-fors of integrating PPM with back office systems by registering for the Webinar by Margo Visitacion, a vice president at Forrester Research, serving Application Development & Program Management professionals.

Margo focuses on the areas of project management, project portfolio management, PMO, software testing, quality assurance and Agile test methodologies. She has worked with Forrester for eight years, during which time she has covered project and program management, project portfolio management, project-based organizations, integrated IT management, requirements management, quality assurance and testing processes.

Today we announced new ERP connectors for the Daptiv Connect™ integration service. Daptiv Connect™ already offered customers the capability to pair the leading SaaS-based PPM solution with many major ERP and CRM packages, as well as other data types such as application development environments and legacy systems. Now Daptiv offers ‘pre-configured’ ERP connectors to enable customers to streamline invoicing, chargeback and payroll business processes and enable greater financial insight, management and control.

Daptiv Connect™ has delivered significant value at many leading enterprise customers. For instance, one Daptiv customer, a major US airline, implemented Daptiv Connect™ to exchange over $700M of financial data from SAP with Daptiv on a weekly basis. This comprised data from hundreds of business initiatives and enabled their PMO to make critical prioritization decisions using Daptiv Work Intelligence™ reporting every day. By using Daptiv and SAP together, they streamlined their invoice reconciliation process and eliminated duplicate data entry, while enabling complete and accurate financial reporting to drive accountability for individual business projects.

The Daptiv product team has taken the insights from improving enterprise business processes at dozens of customers and packaged these in two new pre-configured ERP connectors. ERP Timesheet Connect enables timesheet data to be exchanged between Daptiv PPM and an ERP system, while ERP Invoice Connect enables the same capability for invoice data. You can read the full details of these offerings in our press release here.

Unlike on-premise integration projects, our Daptiv Connect™ on-demand service enables ERP implementations to be implemented in as few as three days with an average implementation in less than 30 days. A project manager from a $2.5B retail firm recently commented, “I’ve been involved with integration projects like this before at other companies and implementations could take up to 1 ½ years. With Daptiv we were up and running within a month.”

Daptiv Connect™ is preconfigured for Microsoft Dynamics, Netsuite, Oracle eBusiness Suite and SAP. The new connectors are priced at a flat rate including setup and first-year subscription, and include support and maintenance.

If you’d like to learn more or see a demo of Daptiv Connect, please give us a call at 1-888-621-8361 or visit us on the Web at: http://www.daptiv.com/solutions/daptiv_connect/index.htm.

Ian Knox
VP Marketing at Daptiv

Projects@Work recently ran a story about the Abbey Road Group, a land development firm that implemented a project management solution to streamline project and administrative efficiency. What they experienced was a productivity gain of 200 percent since January 2008, when the real estate market was headed south.

After tiring of unorganized tools like Excel and Outlook, Abbey Road implemented an on-demand project management solution from Daptiv. The company began seeing immediate results, including increased clarity and communication among their staff of project managers and engineers.

Abbey Road pushed their improvements a step further by allowing their clients to access project information, increasing their visibility into project progress while equipping them with a forum to collaborate directly with developers.

Even more, the development firm selected the project management solution over other industry-specific (land development) tools because it was flexible enough to fit to the firm’s processes rather than requiring users to bend to a specific format.

Lesson learned:

• Use a hassle-free solution that is available on-demand
• Pick a tool flexible enough to adapt as your processes change and improve
• Choose project management software that can be pre-configured with your unique industry terminology so it’s instantly familiar to all users
• Reporting and collaboration are key! A client that is “bought in” because they know what is going on and have a hand in their own success, is a happy client that is more likely to be profitable and will return for more business.

Ultimately, Abbey Road found something that allowed them to streamline their reporting process and focus on the work they specialize in, rather than worrying about the in’s and out’s of project management software – all without sacrificing the features they needed in an enterprise-class solution.

Feel free to read the full article from Projects@Work (one of the Web’s best sources for project management resources and tools for professionals and training), highlighting Abbey Road’s project management implementation, and recommendations from their lessons learned throughout the process. Daptiv also has a case study on Abbey Road Group with additional details available here and you can follow Cassie Porcella, the company’s business manager, on Twitter – ask her how they are doing!

 

Did you know that April 30th is National Arbor Day?  I'll be honest, it wasn't until last night when I saw a message about "a free seedling" promotion at a local nursery that I even remembered there was an Arbor Day.

I did some research and found this great site that gives the entire history of how Arbor Day came to be, and the man behind it.  The premise is simple: trees are an important part of nature's ecosystem and it is critical that we plant new ones to ensure the resource is there for us.  From the history lesson you will also note that civic groups and schools were a big part of the tree planting effort and took responsibility for planting and nurturing their trees.  At Daptiv we have our own version of Arbor Day up and running every hour of every day.  It's called the Greenhouse.

The Greenhouse is a part of our online community where we give members the opportunity to plan their ideas for how Daptiv can improve our product and/or services.  In doing so, the idea is then exposed to the community members who have the chance to vote, comment and nurture the idea.  By collaborating with the community, the team at Daptiv then cultivates all the ideas and we do our best to incorporate them into our product roadmap.

The Greenhouse isn't new - it's actually been around for quite awhile and we're proud it was recognized as one of the first significant efforts to collaborate customer with customers on product innovation.

In the coming weeks we will be working on a summary report on the Greenhouse, and some of the great things that the community has helped plan, cultivate and make happen in our product.  We are thrilled to have such a supportive community that cares enough about working smarter, faster and better that it would take the time to collaborate with us on the Daptiv solution.  Thank you for your continued efforts in helping make Daptiv products successful for our entire customer community.

The Greenhouse is only available to registered members of the Daptiv community.  For users of Daptiv PPM you can easily creat an account by signing in with your Daptiv PPM credentials.  For everyone else, you will need to send and email to daptivcommunityadmin@daptiv.com and request access.

Click here to sign in or request an account.

Visit the Greenhouse and be a part of Daptiv's Arbor Day...everyday!

As we approach 10,000 registered community members, I first want to thank everyone.  Thank you for all your contributions and engagement in the Daptiv Community.  It is only through your interaction and sharing of knowledge that the community continues to be valuable.  We encourage everyone to continue to participate so that everyone can learn and be better at what we do.  With this milestone, it is also a good time to assess the current community; what works, what doesnt, what should change, etc.  So, we are asking for your feedback. Through the use of comments to this blog post, we are asking that you let us know what you think.  Good, bad or indifferent, we want to take in the feedback from the community and use it to consider changes.

I look forward to reading everyone's comments and seeing how Daptiv might be able incorporate the feedback into furture improvements to the community.

Thanks

Mike Jensen

 

We are happy to announce the creation of a new Daptiv User’s Group in Philadelphia, PA.  Due to demand in that area, and through the willingness of some awesome customers, it is exciting to see this local user’s group get started.  The kickoff meeting for the user’s group will be on Wednesday, March 10^th  at the PNC Bank Center in downtown Philadelphia.   Doors open at 2:30pm and the program starts at 3pm. 

 

For this initial kick off meeting, the program will consist of:

- Overview of Daptiv Community by Mike Jensen, VP of Community Development at Daptiv. 

Mike will provide insight into Daptiv plans around both online and offline community efforts.

- Overview of Daptiv Consulting Services by Chris Broyles, VP of Professional Services at Daptiv.

Chris will introduce Daptiv Consulting Services and how we can help customers with the ongoing success of their implementation. 

- Customer Case Study: Radian by Chris Tulino, Assistant Vice President at Radian.

Chris will be presenting how Radian has adopted Daptiv and specifically, their use of Resource Management capabilities.

 

The program will conclude with a networking/social opportunity sponsored by Daptiv.

If you are in the Philadelphia or surrounding areas, we welcome you to attend this kick-off event.  For additional questions or to RSVP, please contact Aaron Berntson (aberntson@daptiv.com)

Location

PNC Bank Center

Center Hall

1600 Market Street

Philadelphia, PA 19102

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IndustryWeek Magazine ran a story last week about an international auto parts manufacturer that successfully revamped the project management of its engineering department.

Katcon faced a major undertaking when trying to get offices in the US, Luxembourg and Mexico to coordinate their efforts in product development. With a combination of software and new collaboration workflow, they did it with aplomb. In literally a matter of days, the company went from 0 to 100% visibility into its internal processes, making it possible to decrease time spent in meetings, reduce costs and improve productivity.

Best of all, they now boast that 100% of new projects are completed on-time!

The secrets to their success included:

• on-site training with a local consultant
• plenty of communication
• weekly check-ins
• buy-in from the entire team
• centralizing data and process standards with on-demand software that could be used by all, no matter what their location or timezone

Katcon is in the process of applying the lessons it has learned to other departments within the organization, including R&D and QA and manufacturing. Read the full story on how they put a new collaboration process to work at IndustryWeek.com, the online site for the manufacturing industry’s leading publication:

New Collaborative Process Plus Technology Drives 100% On-Time Projects

 

We’re pleased to announce that Sisters of Mercy Health System (Mercy), one of the nation’s leading health systems, has signed on with Daptiv to manage its project portfolio.

Mercy consists of roughly 37,000 employees across 26 acute care hospitals, is the ninth largest Catholic healthcare system in the U.S. and operates facilities and services in a seven-state area encompassing Arkansas, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma and Texas.

The selection followed a strict evaluation process of three major project management providers. Since implementing, our Professional Services team has worked closely with Mercy, developing Work Intelligence solutions and using Daptiv Connect to integrate Mercy’s existing time-tracking system into Daptiv PPM.

The health care system’s Enterprise Project Office chose Daptiv PPM to:

• Increase visibility into its project portfolio
• Integrate and be flexible to meet its business needs
• Gain insights from to make timely decisions about which projects required investment and which needed to be stopped (a problem that cost Mercy time and money)
• Enable project managers to understand Mercy’s resources and organizational capabilities
• Avoid project bottlenecks and improve project governance
• Allow project team members to author, view and share information in one application

With Daptiv, Mercy has already begun improving decision making, optimizing resource allocation and streamlining inefficient processes. If you’d like to learn more about how Daptiv PPM can help run your business, please don’t hesitate to contact us.

To help your company get even more value from the Daptiv PPM service, Daptiv has created a new free webinar series.  Each session will feature a special guest panelist, and executives from Daptiv giving tips and perspectives on how to help your organization better manage day-to-day business challenges using Daptiv PPM.

Topics will include:

Aligning Business Needs to Daptiv

Selecting The Right Projects

Defining & Optimizing Your Portfolio

Getting the Most Out of Scarce Resources

Methodologies to Fit the Job at Hand

For an overview of each of the webinars, who they're for, and what can be learned in each session, click here.

We hope to see you there!

 

 

Today marks the official launch of Daptiv Scrum, a complete solution for managing work in the Agile Scrum process.  You can see the press release or solution page on Daptiv.com for more detailed information.

With the growing popularity of Agile development approaches, we're excited to offer a solution that works side-by-side with Daptiv PPM or separately (the Scrum management tools are also available without the full portfolio management and collaboration feature sets of Daptiv PPM).  Either way, the Daptiv Scrum solution solves some problems that other Scrum tools have had trouble solving for companies:

 Visibility 

Isolation of Scrum teams from the rest of the business can help the development teams avoid distractions and stay focused.  However, it can lead to a situation we're calling "Scrum Island" in which the business loses visibility into Scrum work.  Companies that are running both Waterfall and Scrum development process run into problems giving shared visibility to both types of work, as they have no central source of truth for capturing information.  Daptiv is perfectly positioned to solve these problems, as this Scrum solution comes with the full power of Daptiv Work Intelligence and its ability to share and visualize data using enterprise-class reporting and dashboard tools.  

 Flexibility

Scrum is a flexible process that can't be put in a box:  there are many flavors of Scrum that preserve the essence of Scrum and adapt it to the needs of a particular organization and development team.  Naturally then, teams shouldn't want inflexible Scrum software tools to run their process, right?   Daptiv Scrum (like Daptiv PPM) is highly configurable and flexible enough to handle any of the flavors of Scrum. 

 Escape from Scrum Island

One of our company mottos at Daptiv (we even had recruiting business cards printed) is "Life's too short not to have fun."  Well, we're having a lot of fun with our launch of Daptiv Scrum.  

Play the game Escape from Scrum Island for a chance to win an Amazon Kindle, or read the Escape from Scrum Island white paper.  And please speak to your Daptiv representative or Account Manager with any questions you have about Daptiv Scrum.

 

 

 

 

 

Thank you, Henry!

 (Note:  Daptiv PPM Spring '09 went live for our On-demand customers on Saturday, March 21st)

Henry Gantt’s (1861-1919) vision for managing work led to the graphical schedules that still bear his name: Gantt charts today help managers and team members to plan, control and track work to get work done on time and under budget. Having launched the first online Gantt chart for PPM in 2002, Daptiv releases a better, faster and more complete Gantt chart with Daptiv PPM Spring ’09.  Some of you were already using the next generation Gantt in beta form since the Winter '09 release.

New in the Gantt

 Previously in Beta, the new Daptiv PPM Gantt chart adds additional features to make it easier for project managers to create and manage schedules:

•  A new Resource Utilization Details window lets you see daily utilization of all project resources, and make assignment decisions based on their availability over time
• Copy and paste tasks within a schedule (preserving dependencies) lets you build out project schedules more quickly

 More for Administrators

 New quick filters on Project Lists make it easier to administer projects (this functions simlarly to the quick filters on Users Lists in the AdminZone).

 Now ISO 27001 Cerified

 With the launch of Spring ’09, Daptiv announces its new ISO 270001:2005 certification – meaning that Daptiv fulfills the International Organization for Standardization's (ISO's) requirements of operating an Information Security Management System (ISMS) – more confirmation that Daptiv has the systems and processes in place to protect its customers’ data.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I came across this quote from Charles Darwin recently in an editorial in Fast Company, and it strikes me as a propos in our current climate.  This year is the 150th anniversary of the publication of On the Origin of Species and in that book Darwin said "It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives.  It is the one that is most adaptable to change."

I was speaking with one of our airline customers recently--and if there's an industry that's been having a tough time for a long time--it's the airlines.  He was telling me about his experience over the past couple of years which included multiple rounds of layoffs of IT employees, but he was also very candid about his use of Daptiv PPM being a key thread for him to hold on to during the turbulence.  He was able to make do with a radically smaller staff because his configuration of Daptiv PPM had allowed him to quickly re-prioritize and re-allocate work to people who remained.

It appears now that the entire economy is in the midst of turbulence, not just a single industry segment.  For businesses, the ability to adapt to change this year will be key to surviving.