We’ve become business partners with PODIO. PODIO  enables us to create virtual workplaces to collaborate  real time with our customers. Initial trials have been hugely successful and we’ll soon be making PODIO available to many more of our customers.  PODIO helps us manage projects, deal with customer service queries and generally interact with all of our business partners via the power of the cloud.

We’ve been looking at trends over the past year and have learned that over 65% of customers contacting our helpdesk  preferred to send us an email rather than pick up the phone.  We believe this is because once an email is sent, an individual can go about their duties in anticipating of a reply versus picking actually being tied up on a potentially lengthy phone call.  Furthermore, emails allow our customers to send us screenshots of the problem they are experiencing as well as attach any associated files.

PODIO goes one step further. It allows us to share all the same information in one space where collaborators can post files, graphics, and comment on a specific topic in real time. We’ve found this particularly useful with projects where the whole project team can view and comment on deliverables at their convenience. PODIO works in pretty much the same way as Facebook with a user friendly interface. It’s also highly customisable which enables us to tailor each work space to the needs of that business partner/project.

Last year we adopted cloud based document sharing solution, BOX, to share project documentation with our customers.  This year we stepped things up a gear by virtualising our operations, this included filing and storing all of our documentation in BOX. Retrieving documents is now just a keystroke away, and there’s no need to worry about disaster recovery or version control as this is all covered by the power of the cloud. A paperless office is possible and we’ve proved it.  Get in touch with us if you’d like to know more about how to manage your business on the move and via the power of the cloud.

But that’s not all, this week we were one of the first to learn that the guys at PODIO have developed a link with PODIO which means we can now easily access and share documents with our business partners in seconds.

You can read PODIO’s official press release, featuring CGA, by clicking here. If you’d like to know more about any of the topics included in this article, simply send an email to info@cga.co.uk. If you’d like to know more about PODIO, click here.