Keeping Track of EVERYTHING

I’ve used daily to-do lists since the early 1980’s, starting with a WH Smith page a day diary and graduating to the Franklin Covey system for many years. In the late 90’s I tried electronic systems with little success and seemed to always return to my trusty ring-binder. What eventually moved me in to the e-world was:

1. The Cloud and

2. The arrival of multiple devices that can sync in real-time

So now, given a wifi or 3G/4G signal, I can work at a desk all day, ride a car/train/plane or sit in a restaurant/cinema/shop/holiday hotel (even a catamaran in the caribbean) and stay in touch with what I have to do. For some months now I’ve been using Wunderlist as my Cloud-based task manager. It’s free, simple, so easy to use and visible on every device. The challenge as we grow is that we must keep pace with:

1. Task management

2. Project management

3. New business pipeline management

4. Client/Partner/Licensee/Team relationship management

And connect all of the team to each other and to Clients, Partners and Strategic Alliances. So, we have been experimenting with lots of options – and haven’t come up with a solution yet that effortlessly solves the problem. Even since January this year, we have played with:

1. Yammer

2. Less Annoying CRM

3. Confluence

4. Basecamp

5. Google Circles and Drive

6. Dropbox

and we are now looking at:

1. Coach Accountable

2. Asana

3. Insightly

4. Lotus Notes

and others. The list seems bewildering and the brief daunting. Our Operations Director has extensive experience of working in corporate UK and of software businesses – she is expertly placed to do the research. The challenge is to come up with a simple to use, cloud-based platform that will allow us to deliver all of the above stated ‘managements’ and still allow us to keep a quick and easy daily to-do list. If there is a system you know that I have mentioned, please drop me an email. I’ll keep you advised as we conclude our research.