Business owners / Managers of Digital Agencies help needed

[Izi]

We have developed a Project/Task/Client management system designed specifically for the digital industry. Here is an overview of some of the features:

• Client / Company management
• Project management
• On going / Maintenance management
• Password safe for services (ftp/email/etc encrypted)
• Task management (link to projects)
• Website lists
• A few others i'll not mention for now

We are using the system internally and the idea is eventually we offer it away for free for less than 2 users and then a standard monthly charge for bigger companies similar to basecamp.

The system tracks time spent against projects. In our system there are two types of projects:
1) Build
2) Maintenance

The build project would just be a standard project as you have in basecamp. You create tasks and tick them off.

The maintenance project is different. For maintenance projects you assign an amount of time that a client has purchased that can be used over the month. I.E projects which have on going work which need doing and clients have a set budget. This works by adding time to tasks (time tracking) and then it coming off the overall allocated time:



At the end of each month you are able to roll over time or choose what you would like to do with it. You can also purchase extra minutes and add them to that month.

So here are the questions we have:

1) Would it be better to allocate budget rather than time and then have the ability to add services. I.E you have a budget of £500 for client A and offer services A at £20/hour B at £50/hour and C at £60/hour. Therefore depending on the service offered will depend on how much budget is used, or should it just be plain old time based? Being time based is simpler but I assume that not everyone works the same
2) Are there any features you would really like out a system like this? I.E sales module, ticketing, website monitoring etc?
3) We will eventually need beta testers. If you are interested let me know.

Thanks for taking time to read.

 

[Izi]

Their pricing is expensive. £45+/user?!

Also, we are not reinventing the wheel. Well we are for the basic functionality but this system is aimed solely at digital agencies. We are not targeting other markets.

 

[Izi]

Thanks for everyone's input, its nice to get an outside view on everything.

The reason why we developed this is because there was nothing on the market which suited our needs. We are a digital agency doing web / app / some print and so forth.

We need to track client requests, projects, tasks and importantly employee time against each project.

We also want to be able to track client services such as hosting, e-Marketing etc.

Whilst there are loads of project management / sales management / ticket management etc style systems out there, there isn't a one solution fits all for our market as far as I am aware.

I also know how important API access and integration with third party systems is to get people to switch / use multiple systems. It is our full intention to do this once we are happy with the base product.

We have designed the system so it runs like other SaaS systems so each account gets a therecompanyname.ourdomain.com and in future we will also allow them to just run their own domain fully.

@DJ Jester I think you are right, offering both methods is probably a good idea.

I think we should basically just release this as a free product and start getting people to give us feedback, thats the only true way to know if its going to work and what functionality everyone wants.